Where the Ravens Go
by obliviousbushtit
Summary: How many more times must the Light Fury get herself into these types of situations? One moment she was flying alone and into certain death, and then the next she finds herself washed ashore on some random beach seemingly cheating it! But… that could wait. She has to deal with the humans and dragons mingling and living together in the vicinity around her first. Good Lord!
1. Tidal Waves and Whining

This was a thankless job.

Why, oh why is it _always_ him who's in charge of handling the brunt of every kin's problems? He assigned his other kin on to specifically help him for this reason!

Fair enough, he has to handle a few conflicts, he was Alpha; after all. But you'd have a hard time convincing him that he should bring on the whole lot of them. May as well had stacked fifty anvils on his back while they are at it and tell him to trek the entirety of Berk!

Oh wait, those good for nothing rascals wouldn't have the intelligence to impart such delinquencies cos they are bloody self-centred _slime_.

Instead, they lay the burden on him as a substitute. Instead, _instead_ , he gets, oh:

 _'_ _I am just a second-in-command, I am going to have you refer to Alpha instead.'_

 _'Oh no, I am not in charge here, take it up with Alpha resting on that crag over there.'_

 _'Oh, nah nah, can't you see I am handling my own problems? Have a problem, call Alpha.'_

Geckos!

And do they thank him for any of the pain they put him through every day? _No, kind sire, I am going to curl up on that corner over there just to ignore you for the remainder of the day and snore at the top of my nostrils to spite you._

Sometimes he feels like some glorified babysitter rather than an actual leader.

How he hates his species so. Even the most little of problems would be bloated into civil war.

Petty arguments, incessant fighting, dragon culture as a whole! Oh, whose mate did these entitled pricks claim first, hmmmm? Who's the one who claimed their spot on the nest first, huuuuh?

Every single dawn and dusk since his abrupt inception into the job, from the very first minute he wakes up, it had been just work, work, work, everything that drains the essence of life out of you, bottom to top, mind to soul, nothing in between—no _life_ in between for him _or_ his best friend.

Hel, that would be a whole 'nother squirming can of worms entirely.

And what does he get in return, you inquire?

Nothing.

Nothing but muted, bloated, hollow coals of emptiness shoved haphazardly into his paws. _You know what, Horrorcow? This regurgitated fish head is fan-fucking-tastic. Now do me a favour and chuck it into the ocean for me, hook. Line. Sinker._

Horse. SHITE that an alpha's greatest gift is serving his people. Just hand him over a bucket of fish plus one good belly rub and he'd be content for the day, full stop.

But _noooo,_ they figured.

His 'kin' decided to do it like how Drago Whateverhisnamewascalled-fist would have done it if he was less homicidal and in hivemind form: like some band of clueless, useless, reptiles.

Ugh.

You know, he ponders as he tries and shifts his body to get into a more comfortable spot on the rock, he pities Hiccup sometimes; sloshing and doing gods-know-what in that cramped space he called a 'negotiations' room.

Stuck in his chambers in the Great Hall for hours on end, almost as if uttering nothing but white noise through the chieftains' right ears.

Because that would be a pre-requisite to being a chief, apparently. The situation has gotten so bad he had to even wear that self-controlled fin thingy every now and down. Oh, how constricted and strangled their lives were!

Toothless just knew he had been dragged into learning Norse for no other reason other than to be the humans' laughing stock. All of that preparation, memorising symbols and writing on scrolls with _paws_ , only to attend a summit with other chiefs and _not_ get a say.

Yes, Hiccup, attending a meeting where you can't even input your thoughts simply because his peoples' intelligence rubbed them the wrong way was a _grand-spanking_ idea.

All he rages on about to the other tribes is the snow belt around the Archipelago dissipating and whatever not, anyway.

Useless.

Thoughts like this simply make him wish they hadn't stopped the Queen and just flew away. What's there to care for or worry about such minuscule problems? Just devise flight plans with your damned selves and everybody will as jolly as a joey.

But those humans are more stubborn than elk; some bloody fat chance he ends up convincing them otherwise.

Pfft, and they think _he_ was the one shoving his head into unnecessary things, oh ho ho ho. Hypocrites.

Posthumously from his dead-from-boredom corpse, he decisively not bothered to go the third time around.

So what, he could have shone the dragons in a more respectable light? He couldn't care less that most of them would think now that he is too bestial to be concerned about such discussions; he simply can't give a rat's arse.

After some precious, precious moment of sulking, he concludes not very much will cheer him up today.

And to think the remedy of flight with your friend was so simple yet so _idiotically_ hard to get, too. _Guh._

Blowing his thoughts away bitterly, the black-addled dragon huffs a string of smoke, charging out of his nostrils and into the heavens above. Two paws sprout out like a lion, Toothless lies on his questionably consensual respite atop the Isle of Berk.

His head entombs into his chest, paws shielding from the world that presented him crudely a yield of unending torment.

He wasn't feeling much for another problem today, thanks.

Not even the splendorous sights would coax him from leaving his pocket dimension of darkness and what-may-as-well-be maternal fatigue. From his perch laid before him a Berk the size of a Kill Ring, an overlook where a daily survey was relatively plain to exercise.

Ahead, a sunset as bright as an egg yolk canvased the skies ablaze, sunrays piercing through the clouds' gentle, dewy overlays and pouring upon the skies a prudish assault of Auburn, flinging its elegance over the sky for all the lands to see. Trees lofty and proud encircle his creek as if they communed a ritual. The town below where the common villager resides was bustling and radiant more than ever.

As did the Viking traditions hold, when the ice settled, and the shortened days reached their frostiest, the pines that enclosed the place were adorned with sentiments and trinkets. Gifts and decorated ordainments were laid out plainly in waiting for the day to arrive – little ones scuttered about with their baby humans, dragons play-fighting through the village round-about... and their village caretakers... merely part of their eye-lines watching the children... and their rest of it? Locked dead-on into their bubbling pints of Nordish Ale.

Only one event could stir up such a ruckus in Berk; an event that wielded the power to degrade heroic and prideful warriors into laughing drunkards and hedonistic coryphées.

...

It was Snoggletog, of course.

Even the dragons caught on to their festivities, though they arranged their events in a less… cordial manner – not brightly if Toothless was to put it bluntly. Their poor replicas of the humans' ornaments were quite the eyesore to the nest. Even uncaring Toothless never saw the point.

The other dragons didn't have the mental capacity to find meaning between any line, much less attach themselves to religion; they may as well be glorified crosses of mules and dogs.

The only difference that distinguishes the three of them though?

They can fly.

And when any species can fly, you can just guarantee that they would fly from the furthest ways possible from predators. That's what makes a miserable breed like them stand a hair-strand taller than the rest.

Thus, like a yearly ritual and primarily the reason why Toothless decided to bring this up as a form of bargaining for the emptiness lingering in his heart and… something else; when the snow hails upon the tribes of Berk, they fly far – far away to sate what millennia has coded their evolution for his winged family: to mate.

And not even their own humans could halt Mother Nature on that end, even if it means thinking that their ways of doing are...

Special?

Even so, the humans thankfully respect that stance... and in this season... this one in particular, they had found that their dragons' comforts on that secluded island was just as if not more important than this year's Snoggletog.

Wouldn't want to have a repeat of the last 5 years, now, would they?

There, his gaze shifted the radiating sun. Dragons, paw in paw, wistfully flying off into the sunset to create new spawn.

…

…the same situation can't be said for him, unfortunately.

For all his life, he simply assumed that to sire a hatchling nigh impossible.

Twenty years. Twenty years, he waited for the day he sees another one of his blood, soaring the skies and through the clouds. Twenty years, he waited to be somewhere he felt like he belonged. Twenty years, he was alone, not a single one of his kind seen or heard, not a single pack to call…

Family.

Alas, such necessities were refutable in accordance with Life's moral code, and he eventually came to accept the cruel reality of the situation: he was the last Night Fury alive.

Well, be that as it may, that still doesn't detract that he was more than willing to settle for the next best thing…

 _Squawk!_

As sudden is as sudden does, a call from below his perch hurls with a panic to rival his brother's into his ears, rattling him awake right away. Normally, he would reply with a groan, or if he was feeling particularly pale – a moan – but he knew that no dragon would so squawk so brashly as this one did.

 _Something horrible was afoot._

Quickly, his four paws achingly scrounge the ground to the edge, throwing his head off the side. There he sees tip-tapping her feet in a frantic manner: Stormfly, breathing agitatedly atop a crag lower to his. That was when the severity of the situation really started to tumble upon him.

She was put on scout duty today.

A croon rumbles out his throat, impatient and feverous to assess the situation. Concerned bleats between gasps for air bite back at him. Soon, she shifts from the crag from which she erected on and onto the edge, jutting her head up and down to the beaches. Her pupils, standing but a little thinner than the sharp end of a knife, pierces into his bright, green eyes. _Now is not the time to dawdle, dear Alpha._

Thus, without so much as a hint of doubt in his decision, he takes off, flying as fast as his wings could take him and into the sands.

* * *

Wings pulled tautly and its girth trembling, he gazes from the comfort of the beach's overlook, eagle eyes scouring the beige land empty. They plunge like fishing bait into the sand, turning over every nook and cranny.

Soon, rather conveniently, he might add, the clouds suddenly broke apart, showering sunrays upon the sands below, illuminating its glittery wonder. Seizing his good fortune, his visionary hook weaves and turns, before finally catching and reeling a figure off at the side.

Now that he thinks about it, he didn't even need the Sun to see such blinding white. A white, lingering motionless as the rolling waves ram against it.

He tries to make it out further as his eyes adjust for clarity, and, when he finally sees it, even if it is too early to suggest anything conclusive, a disenchanted taste soon embeds itself upon his taste buds.

All this drama, all this panic, all this bestial vigour from Stormfly,

all for this… white limp…

thing.

 _Damn_ , he mutters to himself. He had hoped for something noteworthy to happen today.

…

At least it looked sparkly.

Tumbling down the slope, his four paws carry him over closer to the sun-bathed figure. Just from this distance, he could just make out it's… features, if he could call it that. Eventually, he gave up and resorted to flying instead. His quest for better calves was swiftly thrown out of the window in a matter of seconds.

 _Gods, am I unfit._

Maintaining a steady pace, he glides through the musty air and closes the distance between the white figure.

Soon enough, more and more detail began to settle on the figure, managing to reach his sights. Something red, something pottering like a fluid from its… body.

 _So, it is something living then?_

 _…_

 _Holy shit._

He hastens his wings, the very real possibility that this figure could be dying or dead not lost at the back of his mind. After what he felt was seconds spanned out to eternity, he finally reaches mere metres from the body, a good deal away from any ports residing in Berk. No wonder only Stormfly found it.

Again, his feet land and come into contact with the sand, seeing no further reason as to go any further; a decision he would soon come to regret and lonelily loathe over: this Alpha business was killing his body slowly.

It had not even been two _years_ yet.

Shaking it off, he growls under his breath as he looms ever-closer to the gleaming creature's body, his worst fears not far from becoming reality. New features that previously went unnoticed soon become achingly noticeable as he fast approaches: a cratered back with tears tearing its skin apart, a tail with a shape that eerily resembled, resembled, his and… are those wings jutted in its back, he sees?

He's a sheep's toss away from its lingering corpse by now, and what he figured to be a pear-white dragon was now more visually apparent than ever. The sparkles weren't simply an illusion of the eye: they actually were a _part_ of it.

Deep down, he knows he should go back and get Gothi to come and handle this, buuutttttt he had had nothing stimulating or _exciting_ happen today, as you know.

And the more he contemplates about it, the more he thinks it was a good idea.

Yeah! What could possibly be more exciting than potentially discovering a whole new species?

With the cruel hand of curiosity guiding his, he stands an arm's distance from the creature – front-side tucked away in the pasty sand. The claw grabs ahold of its hip, lingering only but a few moments more.

A sigh.

Finally, it rolls.

His claws clinch the ground.

His mouth evaporates.

His limbs go limp.

His heart quakes.

Blood rushes to his cheeks.

Its frontal features were far too realised, far too familiar to ever stray him away from the contrary train of thought.

He never thought he'd live to see this day. It—she. This dragon was his blood. A fellow Fury.

And it just so happened that she was in the rapid process of dying, too. Great.

An eye, or what remains of it in its mush, hangs by a thread of veins just out its left socket – breathing laboured and weak; wheezing. Scales, battered and torn, wasted onto the brittle sands a steady gush of blood. Gods.

Whatever – or whoever – had really done a number on her. He dares not what think of what would happen should she stay on the sand any longer than she already has.

He bellows a terrible moan.

 _Air-taxiing that old, miracle-working hag like she was a younger Hiccup was going to be a pain in the arse._


	2. The Caged Bird Sings

**Somewhere not too long ago, in a place separated by a ridge of ice and thunder...**

* * *

 _Un._

 _Fucking._

 _Believable._

Panting and wheezing and digging into her chest for all her life, the red-ribboned thief couldn't believe it. And neither could her partner-in-crime.

Their minds were bare whisks away from imploding into bloodshot splatters of gloppy goodness – kindred hearts, pounding away as if there endured no tomorrow.

The two companions laid there, beneath the blanket of the blotched warehouse dell, dappling moonlight tumbling from a window and all, both struggling to contemplate what on earth just happened.

"How in the hell did the guard not see us?" the friend shakily murmurs, hazel eyes lit aflame with hysteria.

The red-ribboned thief simply shrugs, turning to face her companion. "I don't know, but if we both end up dying here, I want your last thought to be of how you managed to kill both of us."

Her companion, though half-dead, chortles a laugh, slamming her fist into the thief's shoulder. " _свинья_ _._ You'd be lying to yourself if you didn't think this," she motions her head at a bag the thief carried, "was worth it."

The thief begged to differ. For all the incongruencies of dodging and weaving they went through to get to this bloody thing, this 'holy grail' certainly didn't appear one bit worth it.

"Bah," the red-ribboned spits. "This won't even last us a month; three weeks, if we are lucky."

A nodding finger is raised in protest. "Not if we ration the coin properly."

The thief shivers unwarily at that, not two steps away herself from being distraught. "For what it's worth… we can both agree we went in a little over our heads, right?"

Her partner was in the motion of biting back with something witty and insulting, but she eventually decides against it.

She couldn't help but agree. "That, we did," she finalises. "And it definitely didn't help that _your_ fat arse was the one causing the most ruckus."

Her companion could only roll her eyes. "Would you rather not have your one and only getaway?"

"I…" Her friend shifts uncomfortably at that, eyes wide in amazement.

She had just been beaten at her own game.

Letting out a chilled sigh later, she crosses her arms, looking away as she always did.

The thief softly snickers at her resignation, all too proud of her antics, but not before long murmuring gravely to her friend: "Wait here."

She slithers her form to the hallway, head peeking out and whipping both left to right, before finally declaring under a comforted, controlled sigh, "he's gone."

The friend lets go of her breath, relieved. "You can thank me for getting the map later."

"And you can thank _me_ for remembering the bloody thing."

"Hmph." In piteous response, her good friend slinks back onto the sticky surface of the warehouse wall, huffing to make some non-existent point.

What she didn't notice at first though – only ill-fated moments later – that from it, black musky stains would carve a new home onto her top. And when she did finally notice and acknowledged it, ones that she just knew would horribly stand out.

 _No,_ the stained thief echoes in her mind's chambers. It definitely won't bode well in daylight. "Goddamn it."

Her silent cry doesn't go unnoticed by her companion, who turns: "What's got your panties in a twist this time?"

To answer, the friend thought better to show it than to voice out her embarrassment. The thief chances a glance.

A wide-eyed-in-utter-disbelief thief was what came of it.

"Ugh, really? Again?" she half-scowls. "I told you, I told you – put on the leather suit! But did the stubborn _корова_ listen? Nooo…"

Much offence was taken. "That's being a little bit insensitive, don't you think?" the friend rebukes. "Would you rather my skin suffocates?"

"Well, if it came down to it – if I were to choose between a mild discomfort or a broken neck, then yes, Galina. I'd suffocate my skin, too."

The friend Galina sits there, awe-struck at her counter. Galina knew just as well as her friend did that defeat gripped her ego in an unescapable deadlock.

To her credit, she did try to find a chink in her armour at first. But her ears and eyes drooped as she realised, gradually, that nothing would come of it. She simply made too good a point.

At that, the thief's wild eyes glittered. Her crooked smile donned wry.

She couldn't possibly pass up on the prospect of kicking someone already down.

"You know, Gal, for a master thief who is supposedly the bearer of a silver tongue, you can't talk back to save your life."

Naturally, Galina reels back at that – face coloured with affront.

"Oh, shut your trap and save your insults," she bit back, having had enough. "That little bubble of yours must be mighty sound-proof if you haven't heard it. Oh, yes, you guessed right. I am improving. Have been ever since the last two operations. Even as we speak, my psychedelic mojo is conscientiously harnessing your power. And one day soon when you are at your weakest, _you_ are the one who is going to be on the ground begging for mercy."

Now that their privacy was secured, the thief couldn't help but cackle. "Ignoring the fact that that is likely never going to happen, and that the results for your 'efforts' clearly don't show, suppose—suppose that day comes! What could you possibly do to hurt such perfect muscles like…" she flaunts her limbs and flexes, "this?"

Gal could only reply with a groan.

They both knew that her flaunting couldn't be further from the truth – but dabbling in far-fetched fantasies, they supposed, wouldn't hurt once in a while.

So, they played along, hoping it would ease the burden of the anvil reality had set upon them.

"Well, my first course of action… uh… first and foremost, would be to… to…" She pauses for a moment, finger tapping her chin. Oh, she knew she had been lured into a corner alright – without question.

And deep inside, she thought that she should save whatever remaining dignity she had the only way she knew how. Having thought of her scheme, a wide grin conquers her lips.

One that rubs the thief the wrong way.

"…"

"Gal?" Sagging, stones fall off the cliff's edge. "What's goin-"

"Tickleyourbelly!"

"Wait, w-wha…?"

By the time she noticed even the bare motions of the plunge, it was all too late. Like a beast pouncing on its prey, the friend springs onto the thief's form, assaulting her belly until she was degraded into nothing but a laughing play doll.

"Argh! H-hey, stop!" she laughs, grappling for a breath. "No fair!"

An unending barrage, her attack, to such an extent where not one breath could be expended. As Gal had intended. "That's… what you get… for messing… with me!"

On the flip side, rather unfortunately for the thief, the girl had every intention of not stopping. So, she gurgles and begs like a hysteric, well knowing her efforts would be fruitless. "Ah, God, p-please! I submit! I s-submit!"

 _Ah…_ she indulges, _only 17 and I already conquered such a decorated beast. Music to my ears…_

The girl finally stops, much to the thief's respite – lungs still pleading back and forth for air.

Her claws rend onto Gal's thigh. "How… are you so good… at this… ticking business?"

"Are you forgetting?" she spouts playfully. "I am a Galina, so that makes me good at everything by default."

"Sorry, you are saying there are even _more_ Galina's? Give me a break."

"Yes. In fact, I may actually _steal_ the throne like that Dmitri fellow. Hehe."

She clears her throat, much to her friend's surprise, before citing somewhat noisily: _"Woe to the horrors and crimes against humanity of Gal the Gracious! Ever in tyranny were the populace downtrodden in rot and slime, forsaken of happiness and the very notion of a god_. _Forever would her first act of terror be engrained on History scrolls and slabs in bloodshot red: behold! A grand assembly of those uttered Galina on the paddy fields of Moscow. On shall commence on the crags, on the roaring seas, on the rich soil, on the very air you winged curs breathe, The_ Anastasiya _Massacre! And with it, a method of genocide unbeknownst to the audacity of man – unfathomable, unprecedented! Unforeseeable by even the wisest of Tsars! TIIIICKLLLLESSS!_ "

The half-scream went on, galloping off the walls like some manic horse. But never mind that the guards may have heard them, Anna had only blinked twice. "Are you okay?"

"…"

"…"

"…no."

"Fair enough."

Alas, Gal's attempts at trying to soften the first blow were neutered into specks of dust, too far gone into the rabbit hole for any recovery.

Irrevocably, she was by all accounts, defeated.

Well… except one.

Any normal human being would leave it as it is. But, if you haven't caught on yet, here lies on an offered palm a useful tidbit: _Gal is not normal._

Far, far from it.

When others would run away, she'd charge the opposite way. Into the enemy's gallons, into musket crossfire – _amateurs!_ she would think of her assailants; all but a blow of obstructive hair. Friend or no friend, she'd still press the charge, and what lies beyond doesn't matter.

She gets what she wants.

"Given the motherland's naming scheme, we'd overwhelm you three to one. You may have superior firepower, I'll give you that, undisputed. But how, may I inquire, will you hold on to that end? Eventually, your energy will give, and our numbers will press the advantage. The soil will be a canvas whipped with brisks of red!"

Anna couldn't help but grin. "Is that so?"

"Yes, white gecko, I am afraid so."

"Hmph." Getting up, Anna crouches on her haunches and launches herself like a cannonball onto the window sill above the dell, opening it in short, delicate intervals – cracks. "Let's go. I think your speech may have brought us the wrong kind of attention."

Quickly, Anna offers Gal a hand, to which she was a bit sore for. But Anna was right in her mannerisms, otherwise, she'd swing the rope.

So, Gal, swallowing her pride, pulls herself up with the help of Anna's shit-grinning face, clutching onto her red sack for dear life. Beside her, she surveys the overlook of the quiet town. "I… hope this is enough for Dad."

The question rings through Anna's ear, already setting up base in her conscience.

 _Dad…_

Her mood gloomed at the thought. "I hope so."

Though the old man was not her birth parent, or even remotely connected to her, she loved him all the same.

After a bit of gloomy reminiscence, Anna snaps out of it. _Gah,_ she shakes. _Dad wouldn't want to see me like this_.

She can fiddle with the problem later, but for now, to think about it would be ill-fated. Gal could die.

In a flurry, she rattles her thoughts and resorts to the only way she could think of to cheer herself up.

 _Gal in a potato suit._

And lo and behold, the cheeky bugger chuckles, to Gal's rising concern.

Rejuvenated emotionally, she lowers her form to face her friend, the threat of being caught red-handed running through her veins. "Now, unless you prefer a public hanging, hop on. I want a smoke."

Not much in a position to argue, Gal does. Her hands tighten and grip around the saddle.

And even after all of that, Anna _still_ finds time and morale to get back at her. "It's interesting, how you view the war, or... what it will be. Grand speech, but you are forgetting one tiny, important detail."

Galina looks down on her, head slightly compromised with thought. "And what is that?"

Daggers in her eyes, slowly, slowly, Anna's neck turns, shooting her down with slender slits for eyes.

"Us dragons never tire."

And before Gal could even begin to shout in protest, Anna took off into the night; leaving only the barest trails of prancing dust behind, and the Night Watch scratching their heads in dumbfound.

* * *

 **This is a test chapter. I will judge its progress based on feedback (from you!)**

 **I will scrap this if y'all don't like it. It is a pretty goofy concept, and I apologise if it wastes your time.**

 **Talking Light Fury. Heh. It rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?**

 **...**

 _Oh, and my other fic? I don't think I may have enough time to update that one until October..._

 _Sorry._


	3. A Past Best Forgotten

Light as a feather, sleek as a panther, on the two soared into the dark – unseen, unheard as the midwinter's breeze whip across Anna's scales and Gal's skin. They stayed hushed, wanting to savour every last bit of this before dawn rose. By the tip of her ragged wings, by the edge of the bone that ran down its leather, swung her red-ribboned ties - its waves tousling evermore in harmony to the tune of a church's choir. A Silent Night.

Infectious, the moonlight was this evening, festering into every crevice of the violet-canvased sky, shadowing her starry-eyed colleagues with her silvery glow, muting their own colours.

Despite their shining cries and white streaks of protest pleading independence, Anna didn't have it in her to take it up with God for better treatment. She was a beneficiary.

Usually, glitters riddled her scales like the worst kind of smallpox under the gaze of the sunlight. And for some reason, they seemed to turn a blind eye at night. For that, she felt grateful.

For that, Gal would always compliment her, staring at her scales longer than it was socially acceptable, always mouthing each and every chance she'd get a thousand deviations of "bar the flat face and glittering-white scales, no other dragon could look as graceful as you."

In turn, she'd mouth back a thousand deviations of "really?" to her each and every chance she got.

Because... she didn't feel beautiful.

No, she couldn't. Not when she strolled about, barging into other people's personal space, bashing the Seventh Rule's head in on a daily basis.

People would think it was almost some sort of depraved obsession - far as she was concerned, it was a parasite. Gal reasoned with her countless times before that it was better to sleep with a partial belly than not have one at all, but... it certainly didn't feel that way for her. Her stomach would feel as empty as it once was. As if nothing filled the space.

Yet, despite all of that, a longing inside her craved to spew out bile; an accumulation of all the overwhelming disgust she had for herself. There were people, good people, scattered among Dudinka, starving like her, suffering as she did; and she whisks their hard work away like it was common garbage.

Every night she prayed for forgiveness from God before of that.

She took it from His silence that God must have taken her as a lost cause. Anna lets out a smoked huff at the thought. She wouldn't have anything against Him.

Over the crags of the crumpled lands they flew, the vast overview of the town they begrudgingly hold so dear, stirring soundly like a child below them: the fishing-town of Dudinka.

Or, what Gal would occasionally like to call it: a burning pile of shit stain and piss.

And to be fair, she wasn't necessarily wrong in essence. She was simply naming it for what it was: a lesser offspring of greater sires. Even the locals wouldn't necessarily object. Really, it was simply a bunch of sett they called houses and buildings and 'modern architecture', cobbled up densely onto the incline of a hill, with soil as wrinkled as the old and haphazard roads which flowed through - some of them careening off to the side and into British soil.

There was a consolation to be had, though: even its appalling appearance would pass for a luxury resort compared to the dank slums of Britain.

So, how did things get so dark?

The problem, or so Gal proposed as she read in the library, was the very nature at which the town was incepted.

The town was a… pet project of Russia.

Overlooked primarily as a base-of-support, it was built under the guise that the Russian Empire would attain generous spoils from the ocean to supply the mainland. The main attractions for them initially were the rough weather, deplorable position for invading armies, and a peculiar feature that had them figured to be the doing of the Devil himself.

'Tis a ring of ice.

A wintery barrier of frost and death looming not far from the shores of Dudinka. It stands with a malice that shook the superstitious disarray, prompting some of them, even those who had holes in their pockets, to pack up and leave at the sight of it.

Those that saw it little more than a natural occurrence stay, though, no one could provide a straight answer as to how a wall of ice would shield them from the North...

Royals thought that thing to be a thing of evil. That it would suave any sea-faring army that to lay a finger on Russia's North-west flank would wreak a curse comparable to the Plague.

Aside from such calamities, however, food was also among the primary concerns of the Tsars. Kings of centuries past wished to get fish to supply the mainland from Dudinka; and much to design, they did.

For a time.

Now, its fish were all but depleted - or killed, rather. A victim of its own success, oil from neighbouring fishing manufactories poisoned its fish population, killing them off, making way for a more industrialised Russia.

But even that proved folly. With it's one and only railway discontinued as people made less intensive and constraining time to put food on the table, trade with the mainland had been virtually impossible.

No trade didn't necessarily equate well to a healthy village. It was already labelled as a failure in the royal's eyes.

Ever since their assessment, it wasn't much of a stretch to say that it was the runt of the litter.

Even so, Dudinka carried on with life, harsh as it was – a flea unstirring, unwavering within the endless fur of a colossus' back; small. Insignificant. A land ignored, shrouded in futility and poverty. A land forgotten.

They made so much as a dent in Russia's history – a dozen or so locals that helped to fight off the Mongols; the bare traces of trade that promoted the mainland's economy with other kingdoms. Shown was the extent to which they extended their gratitude, and, clearly, the rest of Russia didn't find that adequate.

The mainland ended up giving them the cold shoulder.

Nowadays, it dwells in a hollow shell of its former self; well, if there was one, to begin with.

Like a black bear in winter, it hibernates, waiting as the falling dust and dirt piled upon its hide. Every day it ages, its buildings deteriorating, its paint peeling, its life waning.

But whatever the pain, whatever the toil, the lonely port presses on still - the stubborn hope that the mainland makes more room on its stick blinding their senses sightless.

The place was a solemn sight to the flying cohort from above, seeing it in all of its diasporic glory from above, tugging achingly at their hearts. But one thing was made abundantly clear in matters concerning their unwarranted fondness of this rancid cesspit: it was home. An admittedly shitty one at that, but still.

Not before long, merely a quarter of a day since commencing their heist, over a few crag-infested hills, a lake stolen from the Romans and the forages of greenery, the two companions find themselves looking upon a familiar sight.

Their cottage.

Wrapped around in the thick of the trees, greenery refusing to stand near the house from a 200-metre radius as if the innards of the house were cursed – like its trinkets were tainted by the pointy fingers of a witch. Hell, they wouldn't even be surprised considering how much bad luck they have been having for the past...

Well... ever, they guessed.

Once on the ground, they slunk into the folds of their tiny house quickly, Gal still clutching to her red bag and shivering from the altitude's freeze. The disdain on her expression when Anna could only be bothered with looking for her smokes was quite amusing.

After all was said and done, and the aided satisfaction within one of them reaching an all-time high, the two hound onto their dining table, sipping on some leftover soup from yesterday they just couldn't bother on heating.

Well, whatever Gal considered to be sipping anyway. More like slobbed.

To think a dragon would have more courtesy than a young girl such as her. Anna giggled at the thought.

Thus, they continue to salvage whatever they had out of the probably spoilt soup.

Normally, they would have tried to see whether Anna's flames would work to heat things, but the pots and pans staring mockingly at them at the edge of the cottage told them otherwise. And the wood.

Yeah, the house being made entirely out of wood was something to consider as well.


	4. Crying Out, Nobody Came

Most nights, dragon and human would sit in silence, reminiscing of their next raid. One of them accentuating enthusiasm, and the other, reluctance. Tonight however… tonight, was not one of those nights. See, verbal battles between them do not go well once started, and rarely do they ever end in armistice. From start to finish, their acrid assaults were a bitter fight to the end. Because as sisters, they felt contractually obligated to keep at the verbal battle until:

 _(a) One of them gives up; or_

 _(b) One of them dies of throat cancer._

Neither wanted for any of those to happen, especially the first bit.

So on the slaughter on the battlefield veered, neither militia brokering any land. Even should innumerable worded lives be lost and buried beneath the sodden trenches, even should the taste of copper befall onto their soldiers' tongues, even should geysers of blood sluice into the air. As far as they were concerned, they were at a stalemate, and unless one of them gives in, neither shall surrender. After much silence and pity-sips from leftover soup, Anna was the first to strike. "You know, if you so had the boldness to attack my cavalry, we'd burn your sorry _ослы_ off the face of this Earth."

An amused huff seeps hurriedly from her throat. "The opposite would happen just as well."

"How so? You bear no flame – you _and_ your men. It doesn't exist!"

"I will make them exist."

A snorted snigger as a fist theatrically slams the table. "Hah! Don't make me laugh!"

Gal's wields her poker face, much to the confusion of the dragon. "We will still beat you, you know."

"Oh, yeah? With you and whose army?"

Beaming, Gal unsheathes her pale fingers in full view, ogles in her eyes. "This army."

Anastasiya slinks back, dawning on her face seamlessly and simply: regret.

She didn't expect she'd be willing to go down so easily, certainly by the hands of a child. But the human hand was a powerful thing, and she'd know better than to put that statement to the test. So, she orders her men to cease fire – her heart too burdened by the prospect of losing entire control of herself.

 _Sensitive belly be damned._ Gloomily, she places gently her bowl onto the table; her caerulean eyes, copycats of what Gal's started.

Ashamed, they try to find a crevice on the floor to cower, only to involuntarily come to stumble upon a certain red bag.

And, after a moment of processing, what is inside.

Her evening thoughts soon come tumbling back onto her conscience with the force of a freight train, and her two steps backwards of emotion discomforts Gal. Anna's shaky breath seals it.

Hurriedly, Gal reasons: "Anna, look—"

"Why can't we go back? Back to our farm? It is not like anybody would see me or anything. It isn't commonplace. We can grow our own food, our own crops, perhaps animals, and if we pray hard enough, maybe rain would finally reach there. Just… anything would be better than… _this_."

"Anna... you know just as well as I do that we'd starve there."

"You don't know that!"

"Anna, face the facts. We barely put enough food on the table as it is, and you want us to feed livestock?"

"I could go fish at sea…"

"What little you got even in open sea wasn't enough for the both of us; it won't be enough for them. They don't even _eat_ fish."

"I know… I-I just… I just don't want us to s-steal!"

"We'd starve!"

"Then why does it feel wrong, Galina? W-why does it feel _so_ wrong? Maybe God is making me feel bad cos… cos He doesn't want us to steal. Maybe H-He is trying to tell us that He wants to help us – w-we just need to stop stealing and pray for forgiveness…" Anna sits on the verge of tears, and her conflict made Gal doubly guilty about what she was about to tell her.

"Anna, i-if God… if he truly gave a shit, just one, he would have helped us from the start. He could have helped us when… when mum died. He could have helped us before Dad's lungs began to fail. He could have helped with a slew of problems before they started. But he didn't. He didn't help me, he didn't help you, he didn't help the starving children who perished yesterday on the street, he didn't help Dudinka, and God knows if he actually cares about Dad. Anna, you have to draw the line at some point."

"But… but… but God loves us. God loves all of us—it-it's part of His plan. It has to be. He wouldn't abandon us…"

"I…" Gal's eyes wander off to the left and out of the window, hoping for some divine intervention would pour from the sky like rays, proving her wrong and Anna right.

But none came.

So, she settles for the bare minimum, and her goodwill, tainted as it was, didn't like it. "He didn't abandon you, maybe. But he abandoned me."

Anna's head cranes slowly, slowly downwards. Bitter. The girl opposite her periphery doesn't feel any less guilty. She also wished things were different. It's just she does a much better at masking emotions than Anna ever could. She hides them instead, and she just knew she keeps the kettle boiling, her twig would simply…

Snap.

Even still, it killed her to see Anna sulking like this, and she felt helpless to do anything.

…

 _Anything…_

No.

No, she would be kidding herself.

She could, in fact, do _something_. Something to feed them with.

Just… it was just…

She didn't have it in her to do it again. To go to that place again. Go to that… factory.

She was too scared to do so. Too remorseful. The smoke rising and heat billowing, and a memory.

Too terrified, too terrified, too...

* * *

Once, over a grey, overcast midday, when the clouds were beginning to break, and the winter's chill had settled and tugged achingly at people's hearts, the townsfolk of Dudinka had caught from the bare wisps of the wind that The Beast had claimed yet another victim.

It was such a shame too; they couldn't do anything about it. The town would be all but done for if they did. But neither could care for her name.

But Gal remembered. She could remember vividly. _Dominika._ And she swore to herself that she had never forgotten that.

Well, not like she could ever forget.

Recalled it like it was just yesterday.

* * *

 _Scored_ : a job at the local sewing factory.

 _Objectives of said job_ : climb underneath the machines, wipe it clean of dust and muck.

 _Her superiors_ : a band of shit-eating _гаремы_.

.

Oh, she knew the business owners alright. Their names right down to their nations. And this Mrs Angus could get run over a train for all she cared.

 _The country's name is so stupid,_ she bitterly ruminated as she read the invitation. _What kind of_ _идиот_ _'d_ _start their monarchy with a 'B'?_

You see, Dominika had a… very large bone to pick when it came to Mr and Mrs Angus. Give her a musket and tell her to shoot either Madam Angus or the Devil, she'd properly pick the former any day of the week.

She needed the Devil alive for her next step.

It also didn't help that they screwed with her more than once.

Papa getting killed in one of their factories practically sealed the deal almost immediately, but constantly bathing her village in the thickest, foulest smoke she ever had the displeasure of breathing took things one step too far. Now it wasn't her own suffering, but others as well?

Remembering such deeds only made her angrier, making her curse under her breath and condemn that _dotard_ Angus to squelch through a pool of her own daughter's blood.

…

Yeah, she had a problem with them, and she took that first one specifically near and dear to her heart. She never said it no one, but she bawled a gallon's worth of tears when she first read the condolence letter.

An event she swore she'd take to her grave. Well, if there was one, to begin with.

So, who could blame her when she felt a bit hesitant at first? When she got the offer?

Putting into consideration her extremely tattered relations with the company, death and all… it should come as no surprise to anyone that she was gunning for her pen to maliciously decline.

 _Heh. Scribble some_ мудак _and_ идиот _and_ гомофобов _in there and call it a day – that'd surely piss them right off._

Unfortunately, however, fate would have it that she'd take on a much different path; for her eyes had managed to wander one, two paces too far…

And stumbled upon a blotch of ink that harnessed the power to alter her destiny.

The pay.

Her pupils glittered in delight – dancing shimmers exploding like fireworks in her waking eyes.

With that kind of money, she'd be able to feed her mother and brothers not once, but _twice_ a day.

On the flip side, however, she'd definitely be doing her father no favours if she were to take the job.

She thought of it for a moment and soon finally came to a conclusion, one that she'd surely beat herself over later:

That the needs of the present outweigh the promise of a past long gone.

And just like that, her two options suddenly morphed into one.

* * *

The girl arrived earlier than was expected of her at a quarter past 4. But with a face as lit aflame with determination such as hers, no one could complain.

Dominika had asked for better attire earlier that day – no loose cloth, a bit tighter. Any upstanding breadwinner wouldn't want their body parts to embrace the machine's gruelling teeth.

She pierced into the puppet master's den, wanting to strike a bargain. But she'd know better than to test the overseer's patience. The girl was promptly shouted out of his office – the threat of losing her one and only job too great a burden.

Dominika couldn't bear the thought of coming home empty-handed, lest her family continues to starve.

So, she held onto her adult-manufactured skirt sulking, and strode henceforth towards her workbench. Her hand, shaken fresh from the overseer's retreat, grabbed the cloth that was atop. At the sight of the burrow, she hesitated a bit, a treacherous sigh escaping her mouth. Her mother taught her to follow her instincts when there's danger about – and her mother's advice heeded at her heart ceaselessly.

Luckily, the overseer's watchful eye tapped on her shoulder and snapped her out of the trance.

Her head dove.

Inside was as black as the tribespeople from Newfoundland; the room only had the one lightbulb built carelessly to the side. If something was to get caught down there…

Her throat swallowed her beating heart. _No._ Thinking about it now would be her downfall.

Pity too, for mere millimetres where hand went limp: a dangling string on her thigh, ruffling against the machine's breath.

In fact, she would have managed to have felt it if wasn't for the overseer shouting down from above, telling her to _get on with it!_

She shook her head.

 _Jesus, Mary and Joseph,_ she mumbled under her ragged breath. Now was strike two, and she dared not fathom what came after three.

Her form submersed into the machine. She normally would have covered her ears since it was like standing next to a train's engine, but the black patches that had infected the machine's insides put that on hold.

Before she even started, she imagined that her hands were that of a surgeon, the cloth, her scalpel and her knees, the table, and the machine being her patient. She silently apologised to the ghosts of the factory for her _childishness_ , but at least she'd be remotely encouraged then.

It didn't work.

Dispirited, on she cleaned the machine of its ailments as if treated it in a luxury resort in Vienna.

It was going well for the first few minutes, and everything seemed to be in order. Orders were to wipe it clean inside and out, and she did just that. Though her eyesight was partially ridiculed by the darkness inside, she dared say that she'd been glad for it, for the machine that whirred further inside didn't sound too kind. If she laid her eyes upon it, even if it was only once, she would be waltzing out of that factory in a heartbeat-

Step.

Her skirt. She felt her skirt tug. Tug.

 _Shit._

She felt it. Oh, no, she felt it. The pull. Pull. _Pull._

And in a matter of milliseconds, her worst fears pound on her like some vicious, unspeakable beast.

Scrambling, her hands fastened on to her belt, struggling in fraught to unclip the cloth that dragged her from the waist down. But with the darkness which engulfed her it seemed all but a fairy tale.

It was quite clear: she was fighting a losing battle. Her legs tried to barter for some friction with the ground, delaying the inevitable.

Dominika hadn't yet acquired that knowledge, however, and fought stubbornly for release.

The string was relentless, pulling on her muscles till they burned, beckoning her to give up and submit. She screamed and screamed, _help my poor soul as God is my witness! Help! God, send help! Argh!_

But no help came, the machine overpowering her frail tiny voice, not even holding a candle.

She shouted louder. Louder. Louder!

 _Closer._

Louder!

 _Closer._

Louder!

 _Closer._

Louder.

 _Closer still…_

L-louder…

…

…

…

 _Caught you._

…

Loudest.

Wails and screams of agony pierced and flung about the factory as the machine shrivelled her body into bloody gibbets. So loud were cries that fellow workers finally heard her, each rushing and trying to help her without getting stuck themselves.

However, try as they might, the girl was far too tangled in the beast's throat. Hands, or what was left of them, hopelessly flail for some purchase on theirs, shouting to God for help. Help.

 _Please, help… It hurts._

 _I-It hurts._

 _It hurts so much._..

It was when her blood, eager and hungry, finally seeping from the beast's stomach onto the workers a floor below that the overseer actually gave a damn.

But it was too late. The screaming stopped then.

When her body was finally taken out, or what was left of it, in front of Gal lied a horrible sight – something that she wouldn't expect when she climbed from her workplace and to Dominika's. One that would be etched into her mind forever on.

A torso mangled beyond recognisability. Pink bits had flown and coated the area like corpses in a cesspit. A fleshy rope of similar hue had jammed the gears too.

The overseer could only ever be bothered about that.

Her skull was saved, however, and with it, the expression that lingered intact; vacant, lifeless – streaks of hot, naked tears flowing down her cheeks.

It wasn't of Dominika's intention post-mortem that her eyes wandered straight to Gal's.

Nor were the effects.

* * *

First come every morning, Gal would weep, memories of coaxing Dominika into working at the factory hitting her like a brick. Although she was not part of her death, she felt like she was the one who started it.

And the one who killed her best friend.

* * *

They eyed each other sorely.

The last thing they needed was a petty argument, especially if they were supposed to be at ease with one another.

The remainder of the night carried on in mutual silence, both not wanting to deal with this muck. The two settled on the floor, having sold their only bed - Anna curling onto the cold ground like a cat and Gal leaning her head onto her friend's belly.

As their eyelids tire, their souls hum a tune more or less on the same note.

 _No matter what, at least they had each other._

* * *

 ** _Hi there. Figured I would just do a quick A/N._**

 ** _Thanks for sticking with me thus far._**

 ** _So how did you like it? Did it read well?_**

 ** _Hope so. Just dropping by to ask you folks: any improvements I can make regarding this story? I think it deserves more chapters than this, and the plot and themes had been mapped out in my head. Just... a little advice on how I go about things before I continue._**

 ** _Thanks._**


	5. A Night's Silent Cry

Anna felt the time run pass her as Gal slumbers soundly, the luxury of not knowing her snore stirred such a cacophony about the cottage still embedded within her fragile ego. Anna simply smiles at the image stirring before her, taking in bit by bit this piece of restful utopia.

Normal circumstances would have it that Anna notices the occasional ant scuttering across their cottage's abnormally big window sill to the left of their sleeping corner.

Sometimes, a pesky lizard running across the floor then up their hastily strewn together cabinet-wardrobe-thingamajig just opposite of her.

Then, the rat that would rummage through their cooking herbs on the dining table next to it, though that rarely happened anymore after they raided the pest store.

Lucky enough and an owl would rest on the window sill mentioned earlier, looking awfully suspicious to the kitchenware scattered haphazardly at the corner.

But she could care less about noting such events that did nothing but kill the time.

For in front of her laid nothing short of a splendour. So much so that Anna almost forgot about the fight they had. Nothing had happened as far as she was concerned when she could be treated to a view like this.

Some nights, she would think to herself: _what has she ever done to deserve such a friend?_ Granted, some days she would scoff at the idea, but given the time to think, she could reflect with a clear conscience: she was damned lucky to have a friend such as her. Every night was a reminder that, regardless of irritability, Gal was still one of a kind.

Would anyone else have a friend who would risk life and limb just to save them if they were out in the chilly orifices of a winter's blight when they were still but a yolk in an egg? Would anyone else have a friend who would trudge through Hell and back just to fetch them some herbs for their constant asthma attacks? Would anyone else have a friend who would give regular ear scritches?

 _No,_ she concludes. _No, there wouldn't._

Well, Anna was still quite cross with her, she admits. She wasn't mad _at_ her per say; Anna's simply mad – fretted above all else – about _what_ might happen to Gal.

To deny the mere existence of the Lord was suicide and fool-of-an-Ivanov incarnate. Such wretched thoughts should only be kept to oneself, not blurted out so clumsily in the attendance of a believer – t'was an express ticket to Hell if she ever saw one, and truth holds it that Gal may have bought one such piece.

Even if she ignored all of the religious stuff, Gal's still a pest to the village. Generally being unresting at best, annoying at worst, she's a nuisance to almost every Dudinkan villager, almost as if she held some form of conviction against them. Not to the point where they thought Gal would be one for thievery, however, for which Anna thanked the heavens for. The kids loved her. The adults scowled at the _sight_ of her.

But she should come to expect this sort of behaviour by now, Gal was a whole different beast.

At her youngest Gal was still the same wild child, dancing about the cotton fields and spreading mud all over her face like butter over bread simply because she could. Gal couldn't remember it, but Anna did: her behaviour was appalling, and frankly a headache to Dad. Not having a mother long enough has that ability to change people – strip in her case.

 _Idiot_ , she would occasionally ruminate in her heart. _Next time, I should leave her in front of the Church doors, then later seal it shut with glue and let the nuns take care of her_ , the flying succubus on her shoulder lifts her pitchfork in agreement, _yes, yes, that'd be a splendid approach._

However, the angel fluttering beside her shoulder blade screamed into her ears at tenth-fold the decibels otherwise, reminding her, quite scoffingly: _Galina is your only sister, you know_.

Anna gasps a sigh, flicking harshly at the demon off her blade.

The little bugger was right: both the sibling part and her attitude. Gal was her only sister, even if unofficially, and to reprimand her was no different than cutting off connection to society as a whole, and by God if she didn't want that.

Moments pass, minutes, hours, it didn't matter to her. She wanted to go through their past like a picture book for as long as possible. Her first flight. Their first flight. Learning Russian. Her first walk. Learning how to read. Drawing. Scrawling. Writing. Praying.

She could go on and on and on, and she can. But she knows that the day is late, and that the first sunlight could strike any moment now.

So, shifting, she gets ready for her nightly prayer, causing the least disturbance possible for the sleeping girl. Her eyes close like a red curtain.

 _In the name of the father, and the son, and the Holy Spirit._

Her paws come together as best they could.

 _Amen._

 _Dear Almighty Father, I…_

She pauses. Against all odds, she stops. And she knew it too.

This was new.

She couldn't think of what to say.

Normally, she would have an abundance of words pulled straight off a Thesaurus tome, mouthing and praising God and how great He is. But… but…

For some reason today.

She can't. She doesn't feel compelled to.

The tome isn't opening. Try as the dragon might, it doesn't lift a page.

 _No, no, this is a disaster!_ Her mind flings into a panic, the fear that God might be displeased at her more than He already is, scaring the life out of her.

Soon enough, Anna finds why. As much it pains her to admit it, she found out. Gal. And her trap mouth.

The damn thing got to her. The venom caught on. Latched onto her fragile conscience like a parasite.

Panic overcomes her senses quickly, the urge to thrash wildly superseding her. For deep down, down within the dark, vulnerable dungeons of her very soul.

Gal was right. She didn't like to think of her being right, but her questions pull at her heartstrings like a marionette. If God loved her so much, why doesn't He help? Mysterious ways or not, could He justify the deaths of children? The poverty of those too weak to work? The diseases that wracked civilisations, the endless suffering humanity inflicted upon themselves, those that live on in torture of raping and pillaging?

Why doesn't He come?

Then, with the flip of a switch, her praying comes back to her, a new topic for a one-way discussion between her and God.

A plea.

 _Dear Lord, I come kneeling to You tonight at my weakest. I… I have come to confess in Your Gracious presence. I do not what to believe in anymore._

 _I know Galina's wrong and that her faith is misplaced, but… I am still here. We, are still here. So, are you there, watching? In the heavens?_

 _Every night I have prayed to Your Gracious that I am sorry. A baseless statement in hindsight, I know._

 _We stole from others; their hard work, all of their effort and sweat poured into the day, vanished in an instant, and… m-maybe an empty belly for a few. And, and I am truly sorry, again; e-even if it seems like my words ring hollow a-and that I am not putting enough effort in life… know that not a second goes by that I am not in pain._

 _I know, I know – baseless. I have spat Your Son's grave and all of your herd's graves, so many times that even You must have lost count – saliva sliming off of theirs stones, then departing without ridding of it. As if common garbage._

 _S-Sorry._

Saliva gulps down her throat, heart gripping, eyes welling, paws shivering from fear.

 _-F-Father, I come to you today, not in request for a filled belly or any forgiveness. But love. I… I know it is too much of me to ask, O Lord, but I need Your help. O Lord, I need Your help now more than ever._

 _Prove Gal wrong. Prove her wrong prove me wrong—s-show me that You are real – oh Lord show me that You are there, watching over us, protecting Your children. Show me that You care._

 _I beg of you with all my heart._

She chokes under her rickety breath, swallowing her heart's content. _Amen._

But even with the pleas uttered, even with the emotions poured from her like a jug, not a word was uttered that night.

Not a dream, not an angel, certainly not even a shooting star skimming across the night sky.

Just…

.

.

.

Blank.


	6. Easy Go, Easy Come

"So… how's the book?"

Screeching, sand soaring, Anna jolts into the air with the might of a frightened mouser, catapulting her book off her paws, whizzing past Gal's tousling hair. The cigarette from a maw followed suit, flying off to the banks of water's purity behind her, extinguishing its butt.

The offender blinks in shutters, hand hoisted back to her chest, cringing painfully as her sister flails her body through the notions of her _what-in-the-actual-flippity-fuck!_ phase.

All things considered, such phases usually lasted no longer than five seconds. By right, she should feel grateful for that.

But she wasn't. It couldn't have been further from the truth. Couldn't have been more opposite. At least seeing her friend squirming in perpetual terror was somewhat entertaining. At least she'd get a kick out of it.

This, however…

Let's just say she'd much rather have her friend jumping incomprehensively in fright than the blazing eyes that speared into her very soul and… whatever her teeth were stringing.

Sheathing her claws, Anna snarls: "Come again?"

She barely processed what Anna growled, but Gal took it from Anna's abyss-deep rumble and emerging smoke from her nostrils that Anna didn't _like_ what she did. And she could swear that Anna has only reserved this other side of her for Gal. "U-Uh…" _No_ , she re-evaluated. _No, not at all._

And Anna's eyes only keened further into hers.

 _Ah, shit, I have done it now…_

You may think that Anna's a tad bit overreacting, but could you really blame her hide?

To lackadaisically rupture a moment, no, an image so damned _sacred_ was barbaric at best, monstrous at worst – how pompous, how _insolent_ must one be for a child to intrude this reptile's privacy!

This was supposed to be Me time for Anna. Her and her alone, and it was an instance already rarely achievable due to her rather _time-consuming_ occupation. God – Anna may have agreed to her job, but the least Gal could give her was _this_ much solace.

Her eyes bore into Gal's.

 _Gulp._ She wasn't a happy dragon.

Admittingly, it's hard to comprehend why Anna was ticked lest her slice of heaven was detailed, so, a lending hand:

Imagine, a snowy dragon with a ticking tail sunbathing on a field of grass with the breeze tip-toeing across her and the birds fluttering and chirping about in the ribbon-tousled forest behind her. Now, envision that her scales are glittering a comfortable pearly white, and that she was dozing lazily underneath the backdrop of the silver-blue panorama of a lake. Then, the lulling waves of the riverbank licking languidly by the shore, with not a fish disturb it and the sunshine basking comfortably over their lands.

Finally, add on top of that a pretty good book, and you'd see exactly why Anna was so pissed.

This was not a good start to the day indeed. For Gal and more so Anna.

"U-Um…" Gal blurts, knowing wholly that she has crossed some sort of non-existent line. Well, whatever the case, it made Anna mad. What she wouldn't give to not make a dragon like her mad again. "How's t-the… book…?"

Anna could only be bothered to chuff. By rights, she shouldn't even give Gal the liberty of a straight answer – vague ones were the way the go. Infuriation for the receiver and an oh-so-perfect revenge in one bow-tied package.

Feebly, she mutters: _"Damned hard."_

It backfires, only making Gal even more confused than she already is. "F-Forgive my i-ignorance, but… could you repeat that?"

"Again?"

"Yeah."

"If you insist." She forms a fist on her mouth to hem. " _Damned hard_."

"I… s-still don't understand...?"

"God, it's English, Gal – it's English. What the Englishmen speak. Thought you'd know that by now given your former occupation."

"So… that's, that's the language of the book?"

"Well, that's what I was implying, yes."

Anna stands brook, flabbergasted. "O-Oh. And, and h-how did you come to possess this?"

"Uh… the book raid… remember? Last month?" She could stop a snort escaping her snout. "Don't tell me you have dementia, too?"

"No, no, no, I j-just… just forgot."

"Yes, because raids are so forgettable at this point…"

"Y-Yeah. Yeah. . ."

Silence reeks the area as the ever-patient Anna waited for Gal to gather her thoughts. And going by Anna's newly formed expression, Gal has dispositioned terror flee from her appearance, slowly realising Anna simply needed some form of way to vent and was now a Level 2.

 _-Slightly annoyed-_

It isn't much, but hey. At least she got something.

Trudging, Anna sets off to find the book among the tall grass, growling when her search area bore no fruit.

Gal slowly raises her head up, foot nervously scrawling sketches on the fertile soil. "So… Anna."

"Hmm?"

"Why I am here…"

"Oh," grass clefts from her claws' slashing tenor, "what about it?"

There was another, more significant pause, for what she was about to reveal would leave Anna skipping around like some mad, squealing pig. A prospect she grins at.

"We can see Dad again."

She screeches to a halt, whipping her head to Gal, eyes wide, "say what?"

"Yeah." Gal lets out a nervous laughter. "Most of the nurses are gone now."

Nowhere in Gal's world did she expect the reptile to break into an all-out sprint with the ferocity of a bull to their cottage. "Then what the hell are we waiting for?!"

"Wait!" Anna squirms. "Don't you want your…?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'll look for it later! Come on!"

Soon enough, Gal follows in her footsteps sprinting, shaking her head solemnly on the go. Hysterical. "Anything goes for the dragon, I guess…"

Even her own sanity.

* * *

 _Pack, check._

 _Coin, check._

 _Fruits, check._

 _Violin, double check._

 _Cigarettes for Anna, check._

 _Red ribbon around Anna's neck... duh._

 _Inner confidence in herself…?_

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _Eh._

Once more, Gal dug and ravaged through her bag, making absolutely sure that everything was where it should be.

The money for their launder, the violin for boasting, the trinkets she stole for gifts… all in place with the rest of the canteens and food. She had everything with her and her sense of security should be, well, secured. So, why does she feel so vulnerable?

The nurses locked her – both of them, really – out of the nursing home not just five months back.

They took nightly surveys with a priest around every square metre of the cottage, dead-set convinced that they were expulsing the spirit of Satan Himself – Gal seethed her teeth a sticky wet at what they did, and Anna was doubtful that they would hold such a feat, even if there was one such demon.

All because of a rumour stirred up by the old fisherman down the street, they thought their 'exorcism' was warranted. That did no wonders for Gal's faith in the faith, much to Anna's sorrow.

It only served to divide them even more. Finally, after what must have been a ten-minute flight, they emerge from their cottage's forest canopy and seize sight of the inclined village ahead of them. They could only scowl at the spectacle of it, or rather, what loomed above it: a Sun, levitating like a pat of softened butter in the middle of a bottomless powder-blue bowl.

They hated butter.

"Shit." Anna angrily raises a claw towards the sky in front as she flew, "no clouds."

"Curse our luck," she remarks, a skipped foot on the soil. "Guess that leaves us no choice, then. Same as last time, yeah?"

Anna begrudgingly huffs. "Yeah."

Circling, they land on a thick field of cotton flower, not five chapels away from the entrance.

With a final exchange of nods, they split off, human trotting into the village and dragon galloping towards the forest that overlooked the town with its dull, grey gaze – the perfect cover for the white dragon. It may seem they were going at different paths, but both directions lead to the same complex: "The House of God."

The civic mayor (or: massive cock-sock in Gal's case) had it figured that Dad was possessed, and it just so happened to have justified him to have put the father into a state of perpetual suffering. In a bloody asylum together with Dudinka's soldiers that raved mad.

Hunger strikes were rampant and constant, dreading exorcisms practised on him almost made him mad – all for the sake of ridding the Devil himself. It was house arrest as far as both of them were concerned!

They _needed_ to see him, not just for their sanity but also his.

Whilst Anna sprinted with the haste cheetahs would tear through the ground for, Gal is busy dealing with her own problems: navigating the village. She doesn't know how, she doesn't know why, but the architects must have built this place with a labyrinth in mind, because it looked nothing close to how towns fashion themselves to dress in the mainland. Well, now she doesn't get lost, of course, but it took her many, many unnecessary months just to get the layout of the place down to memory, and that wasn't even considering trying to memorise each street's escape routes.

No wonder the place went under. Any right-minded investor would book the nearest carriage and ride out of this shithole as fast they could.

 _Well, that's what happens when you trade your soul to the devil_ , she supposes. The place threw away any semblance of their remaining image, all for the delusional benefits of technology; lights, factory machines, electricity.

And, perhaps, that's all well and good in the short term, but… was it worth the cost? Of happiness? Of the quality of life?

Hurriedly, she weaves through the shops and derelict houses of the city square, earning ambivalent stares from its folk. the Petrov's textile store, the Smirnov's electric shop, the local school, the Church, the Kozlov's.

Then finally, after what seemed like hours she finally sees it: on a hilly incline, some patches of dead grass and a rotten, winding trail connecting to the place; Dad's nursing home.

Her legs carry her up as fast as they can, the sheer need to see Dad almost over-compelling her actions.

She just hoped that the nurses didn't see Anna, lest they are both doomed. Sure, they can handle a few Dudinkan goons – Gal being able to easily shank them all to death with her dagger – but, with the whole village at play as well as the fact the dragon was a staunch pacifist, Gal doesn't think that the world is ready to see her just yet.

Damn her and her Christian values.


	7. God Can Suck One

"What are you doing here so early, girl?"

The nurse crooks her back to Gal, face-level as if some sort of goliath – the motions of wind from her descent whizzing against her hair, blanketing her with a shadow already darker than the skies willed it.

And despite of the old hag's polite tone as well as having the courtesy to actually converse indiscriminately, Gal interpreted as a shard of glass hurling towards her ego, breakneck. Something anybody who knows Galina at a personal level would be a bad, bad thing to do. "Heard you necromancers finally laid off him."

"Oh, come on, girl. We was simply doin' what was best for you and your father. Do not let the Devil's deceit fool you so easily. Turn your back, and the Devil may very well emerge from the shadows; strike you when you least expect it and before you know it—"

"Yeah, yeah, I got the message when you told me the first two times."

"Galina! You dare insult someone who shreds through to heaven and earth to help you! This isn't some game anymore where you get second chances by the end of it, young lady – this is serious. I do not care for your false beliefs or whatever rot you reject – face the music. While the Devil may not be in there anymore, as God is my witness, traces still remain. And those traces are still as bad if not worse than his presence being here, if not for the fact this building may forever be cursed. You let him or any one of his incubi possess you and tha _t's it. Over. Zit. Gone like the wind lassie. . ._ "

Foot tapping, hands crossed, the girl could not wait to get away from that voice; her blabbering, mentally blobbed out by her power of sheer will and bother.

She hadn't held onto that thought for long, though.

Her attention quickly turns, kicking dust with the wind along with it, as a blood-red-white glimmer hovering over the building lures her eye, slinking slyly further down of the dim forest's incline and into the back of the lodge; the waving grass, the only indication of life present within its flora.

Thank goodness.

"Young lady!" Her mind's shoulder was hauled back with the force of a hurricane debris.

"Yes…?"

"Do not mistake me for an idiot. I know eyes that wander when I see one – some – whatever, and unless you can tell me exactly what I have said you will never enter this House of God eve—"

"'That if I do not repent, the devil will come and get me?'"

A cock cries over the sky's spilt colours in the villages below.

The woman's eyes stuttered, turning sideways, the iron will that once ignited within her veins to fear God, fading. She had made a fool of herself.

Nodding and taking it like a champ, she resigns, uttering, "okay. Thought you weren't… listening." Her shoulders slump, jaw firming, later moving out of the way. A blessed door with a cross on top greets Gal's visage. "Move along, now."

With a step, Gal immerses into the house's folds, a dulled hue quickly overtaking her.

"Oh, and a final precaution, Miss Ivanov?"

Gal winces as she realises Ms. God-asskisser wants to speak once more, facing her begrudgingly. The lady leers solemnly, a quick nod later.

"Try not to disturb the soldiers on your way there."

Gal nods back, turning away and went ahead to Dad's room at the back. On the way, a test-shake of the bag she carried, just for safekeeping – soon enough, a twanging violin inside responded like so, and a satisfied feeling of pride and will quake her heartbeat with resonance.

Dad was going to love this.

Now, if only the soldiers in the room next to him could just stop whimpering for a moment and spoil their reunion, then it'd be perfect.

Well, not like they can, anyway.

* * *

"Do not breathe a word of this to her."

"Don't have to tell me twice, I won't. Though, mayyybe I could give her a little leeway."

"DON'T."

His hands scrub the dragon's head, mischief ever-present in his tone. "Hehe."

Said dragon was about to give him a verbal sopping; glorious and vengeful, those burns were, where they shall be sung by musicians for years to come. But of course, a certain thief just so happened to stumble upon the scene, her head seeping through an opened door frame to his curtain-shielded, cross-dazzled room, smiling. "Am I interrupting something?"

His face glows at the very sight of her. "Buttercup!"

Gal ran at the speed of light, feet hitting the ground hard as she finds for water to quell a desire too blistering for her heart to handle.

Leaping, she falls onto the bed and hugs him with the might of a bear, embracing each other as if they hadn't seen each other for over a millennium.

As the scene went buzzed, Anna could only stand in envy at the corner, her only company, the night desk, sulking her tongue. Oh, how she longed for a society that consisted of another dragon other than herself. At least she'd be tolerable then.

Still, she couldn't deny her friend's right to be happy, no matter how crude. So, she keeps silent.

In the meanwhile, these two moppets laugh as if the whole world belongs to them, soon quieting down once the hilarity began to sink out.

Dad dons his serious face this time. "You know, young lady, I believe our meeting was delayed quite a bit."

"Yes." She felt tears melt a lake in her eyes. "Yes, it has."

They embrace for a little while longer before they both thought any more would be socially unacceptable. However, she sensed on her skin as they hugged one too many bumps on his chest. He cringes.

"Dad."

"No, it's fine, it's fine."

"Please."

Reluctantly, he heeds to his daughter's command, pushing his blanket away from his top.

Two gasps billow at the sight.

Sure, Dad wasn't particularly anything to physically shout about, but they had never seen him this... stickly.

Dad's strutted ribs were sinking through his top, cloth wriggling to maintain its already fragile footing.

"Shit," Gal mutters. "What have they done to you?"

"Oh, you know," he hysterically dismisses, "hunger strikes, water droughts here and there, straight-up fasting on occasion-depending on the priest's mood, or so I have noticed-and constant, bloody, exorcisms. In short, hun, you haven't missed much."

Gal's reply was almost a whisper. "Haven't they fed you since then?"

"Not enough to go around."

"Damn it, Dad." She shudders her head despairingly. "If you are trying to make me feel bad, it's working."

"I don't mean it that way, buttercup, don't. I can never be mad at you, or Anna for that matter. I guess I _am_ bad at lightening the mood, after all."

"Please, Dad. No more jokes," her hand slithers its way onto his, "how did you survive."

His lips break a bewildered smile. "Well…" he would have tapped his chin if he had the strength to lift his bicep off this blanket. "Blind, stubborn hope, I suppose," he huffs.

He wanted to add on that note, though. "The priest can go suck a fat one though. I'd rather been in the snow belt than do any of these exorcisms again. Hell, I'd take it upon myself if I have to. Trod all the way to the coast, swim my way there, only a short distance, and let frostbite take me," he nods in approval, staring off. "Hmm. Sounds like a good idea, no?"

Wide-eyes stare at him back. "Surely not?"

"Ehh…" His hands flip from side to side. "Maybe I am exaggerating a little. A little."

Much like how Anna had done it, his eyes, too, careen off to the side, trying to repel as many bad memories as he could with that damn priest, before unintentionally notice the unusually stocked red bag Gal carried.

"What's that you have in there?"

"This?" she motions to her bag, to which Dad nods. "Um, the essentials, I guess. Real food, among other things." Untying her sack, she pulls out an apple, the benefit of not knowing she stole it swimming happily in his mind.

"Oh, you just know how to make a father happy, don't you?"

Gal flicks back some strands of hair. "I have my moments."

"Heh. Got anything else in that other than food? Still looks too big. Umm… too long."

"Well, as you said, other things, I guess. Coin for emergencies, cigarettes for the religious hypocrite, and… my violin."

"Violin?"

"Yup."

He smiles slyly. "In that case, I do suppose it has been a little overdue for my dose of violin."

"Don't you want to eat first?"

"Bah. Five more minutes without it won't kill me. I want to hear you play." He raises his voice in friendly warning. "Now, you better have gotten better with that last one."

"You bet."

"We will wait and se-hear. Yes, hear."

"Hmph."

So, driven by the will to destroy her beloved father, she did.

Almost ecstatically, her hand clutched the violin out of her bag with every note, keyed in beat by beat in her mind, no sheets attached. Her bow, hovering its shadow over the strings, soon stands at the ready.

Gal. Dad. They both were.

And soon, in relative leisure, as graceful as a swan, she plays.

In the corner, Anna almost felt half-tempted to wait outside for these two to stop, but she couldn't help but be drawn into Dad's expression: one of pure euryopia.

Too bad it ended one minute too early.

After finishing a coda, Dad throws a coughing fit, quickly shooing it off as soon as it came. Thoroughly humbled. "Wew."

But Gal interpreted it as if it was a lung sickness. "A-Are you hurt?"

His throat shook like a riptide to what she assumed was a chuckle. "Hmmph. Only my pride." His grip on Gal's cold fingers tighten. "You played damn well, for your age, damn well. Better than I ever could, I think, and dare I say it, better than your mother. She'd be rolling in her grave."

She pulls her jaw back, shocked at his audacity. "Tall order to pit me against Mum. I could never touch how she strings her staccatos."

"Well," he smiles. "I guess it is lucky that mum and I would have said the exact same thing." He pulls a finger up, shaking with what remaining strength he had left. "So that's two against one."

"Don't flatter me more than I already do myself, please – it's big enough a problem."

"Well," he smirks. "I guess you could say I am keeping your self-esteem intact."

"Whatever."

"Ha."

She sighs. "Anyway. You go indulge Anna with your hilarity while I will be busy outside saving your sorry butt."

"And… w-what is that supposed to mean?"

"I am going to the pharmacist's."

Dad's eyes widen, his previous joy screeching to a halt. "Wait, wait, I am sorry, what? Why?"

"The cough you had earlier didn't sound convincing."

"No need, buttercup. I just had some saliva go through the wrong hole. Nothing serious."

"Look, I am gonna go buy some whether you like it or not," she finalises. "You might get Tuber."

"God, Galina. As I said, it's nothing serious or remotely concerning. The likeliness of tuberculosis happening would be the chances of you getting exorcised thrice a day."

"So, sixty-percent?"

"...

...

"Damn.

You are brutal." He offers her a hand. "Toss me into the belt while you are at it?"

She rolls her eyes at how sincere his tone was. "Dad, please. I don't need one more suicidal person in my three-member family."

"Heh-heh-heh. Still the same old Gal. You should learn to have a sense of humour, next time. It helps."

"What you attempted was hardly 'humour'."

"Your version of 'humour' is so on the nose you may as well draw in 'I am funny, I want attention' on it, it may as well not be."

"Ugh." Like something final, she packs away her violin, leaving all but fruit onto Dad's night desk, and ties her pack on her shoulder. "I bid thee my solemn farewell as I run to save your sorry ass."

"Yeah, yeah. Your loss."

"Meh." A little mischievous wave of the hand as she strolls to the doorway. "Tootsies."

"Love you too."

Finally, much to Anna's complete and utter bewilderment at the level of loving dysfunctionality she just witnessed, Gal kicks off from the room, overly confident in not even giving the dragon in the room a heads-up of where she was meaning to go. She closes in on what as well have been Dad's deathbed.

"You want to go, don't you?" Dad reckons.

She shakes her head, sighing. "I'd rather stay here, Dad."

"No, no. Go." He takes a quick glance out his window to check the sun. Just above midday. "It's about 'feeding' time for yours truly, anyway. And I don't think you'd look forward to seeing how they would react to you."

He weakly raises his hand to pat his draconic daughter's head. "Trust me on this. I'd sooner freeze to death if anything. Now, go. Gal would want some company."

At that final resignation, she puffs, and, with Dad's smile the last she saw, she waltzes out of the room, predicting the pharmacy she was referring to was the one down the docks.

Avoiding all matter any close encounters of the second kind, she leapt through the back's conveniently large window. On the way, she couldn't help but baulk.

Truly, they were two forces-of-nature pitted against each other in a gladiator's arena. She swears in all of her existence, she has yet to see a father and daughter that devolves a reunion to a garbled, hysterical mess better than they do.

And unfortunately, she had to deal with this for all 15 years of her life with these rascals and has come to accept this sort of behaviour. Even a normal person would say that these two were far more disordered than the dragon standing right next to them was.

Well, whatever the case, one thing was clear. God played her fate a cheeky one.


	8. Through the Tumbling Tesseract

Relief brings reality back to the dragon's senses. How lucky a coincidence for her to have found Gal trotting through a trail of lofty grassland, and she sincerely hoped that Gal didn't have the forethought of expecting Anna's appearance. As she moved in closer, her hope wanes as a cheeky smile crosses those pout lips.

Gah.

No matter. She had better things to get to. Slowly but finally, Anna catches on – the indulgent girl, calmly facing at her as she felt the wind run along her skin.

But even the most valiant of mortals couldn't have predicted the dragon's next move.

"GAL," she growlingly demands, nudging at her with her massive frame, hard, "bag."

"Well shit, Anna. You could at least have the common courtesy to say 'please.'"

"Not the time," Anna almost shoves her over, her following push almost sending Gal over the edge, "nor the place."

Agitatedly, her paws pillage the red bag ferociously – its top, cracked asunder by the sheer privation for relief. Couple of seconds later, finally, her paw caresses brittle, cylinder surface, of which she immediately grabs a-hold of, dropping the pack all together. Whisking it out like a six-shooter, the cigarette meets lip to lip, and a gentle flame soon washes over its surface – the butt ignites. Soon enough, she swiftly shuts her eyes as the feeling of euphoria and nicotine dances across her veins, content, and above all else: satisfaction.

Gal simply blinks. "Hypocrite. This." She waves her hands at all of her. "This doesn't correspond with your faith at all. I don't remember Jesus smoking. Or maybe after Judas betrayed him…?"

With a breath of grey smoke, conclusively gratified, turns to her sister, eyes bearing slits. "Well, in this case I am justified. Some people do it out of spite. I, do it with purpose."

"And that reason is…?

"Well…" she murmurs, picking herself off the ground and carrying the pace, dragging Gal's feet alongside hers. "You guys are nutters."

Gal stares at her wild-eyed as she stutter-stepped. "What kind of excuse is _that_?"

"One that is absolutely, perfectly valid."

Gal replies with the first thing that comes to mind. "Oh, yeah? How so?"

""How so?" the girl says. "How bloody so?" One moment you are all touchy-lovey and then the next you both want to bludgeon each other to death; of course, it is perfect valid. I probably don't have hair because I tore them all out when I was a hatchling!"

"Heh. You would have no comprehension how long this was going for – we were going at it long before you were born – hatched, whatever."

"So, what? Two—three years? Cos, I don't think that's too long a timeframe."

"Yea. Ever since I plopped out of my mother's chimney. I think I still remember our first fight… stuff of Valkyries. And crying. Crying, too."

Anna could only shudder in disgust. " _Guh. Christ save her soul._ "

"I have no idea what you just said but I am going to assume that by default is a compliment."

"Hmph."

They stride together through the grasses a further bit more, Anna honouring her subjugate father's wishes for the lovable scoundrel's safety. Soon, however, Gal stops in her tracks, much to Anna's will to disobey her father outright. "What is it this time?"

In smug response, she forms a finger-shaped gun with her fingers, shooting at the incoming civilisation ahead, looming unassumingly on the planks of the beach, much to the detriment of the dragon.

"Ugh. Fine. Just promise me you won't get into trouble for the next ten minutes?"

"Oh, I won't, I won't. I am doing it legally this time."

Suspicion creeps up Anna's thoughts. "And that by your standards is…?"

"Well, legally in non-Christian terms, yes. I think I am a good barter-bully now, don't you think?"

"Pfft. Hardly. Hell, I am not even the type to do it and I am _still_ better than you. You couldn't even bluff that bulk-headed bodyguard, much less cheat a shopkeeper. On second thought, maybe I _should_ come with you…"

"Why don't you come in and try it if you are so bloody sure of yourself, then?"

Anna, almost fed-up with this stupid girl at this point, stops in her tracks, lifting a paw like how a toddler would raise, then controllably motions at all of herself. Gal only had the intelligence to notice her mistake now. Anna was a dragon. "…may as well be deaf and dumb."

How Anna always wriggled her way out of attacks and always redirects the offence onto to her, she doesn't comprehend. She knew it, and Anna knew it as well. Gal was pinned.

Still, as a parting gift, she turns her sight off to the beach right of the field from where she stood, spitting the only response which came to mind: "Bleh."

Classic Galina.

Shaking her head, Anna and Gal turn their backs on each other, hoping to get out of this grass-riddled quagmire. And it was going to be that way, if not for the girl stopping in her tracks, almost out of sudden contrition.

The soil underneath, beating to the tempo of footsteps, quaking her soles. Oh, shit. "Anna…?"

The red-ribboned thief heaves an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"Remember that time you and I hauled ass when one of the guards chased after us near the Chisov's?"

"Uh-huh?"

"Well…" She hastily points to the waving grass in front of her. "Run."

A sudden fear impales through Anna's heart asunder, slicing clean the stringy foundations that held it and into the sharp rocks below. If Gal could look as scared-shitless as she did now, it could only mean one thing; the one thing that would come to harm her little sister coming towards them.

Cotton-picking humans.

…

Oh.

Shit.

Soon, she hauls ass as Gal advised, weaving through away from the impending danger. Into the forest behind Dad's prison, she went, taking extra care not to seduce any glares to her big frame. After what she figures was a safe enough distance, she leans against a tree, releasing her anxiety in huffs.

What she did not know, however, as she jollily makes her way back into Dad's cottage to connect again once more, was a keen eye, spying her down the hill.

A vein-stained eye belonging to an old, God-fearing man staring through his telescope out his web-shrewd, rot-limned cottage.

And through what he saw, he silently huffs in victory. He knew it. He bloody knew it. His son dares not acknowledge the truth when the old man preached it, but now, he knows for sure. The truth. The devil is still there in that cottage, dressed in sickly-white and a face rivalling that of ogres.

And through God's will and as his witness, he is going to take matters into his own hands.

The afflicted need not be tortured by that awful thing any longer, no. Not on his watch.


	9. As the Seasons Sigh

The nurses unbolted their eyes and massaged their temples in dumbfound. Their minds may as well be frazzled into jumbled sparkled stings of short circuits if this was to keep up.

They'd think the vomit-inducing pungency of the rot surrounding the place would deter even the most resilient of individuals, but the comings and goings of the girl with the red duffel bag went against everything they were fighting for. Surely, the girl had to be hanging by the tether's devil's strings by now, but out of some miraculous blessing, she was doused with the ability to repel what great evil this place wrought.

Hours upon hours would go by without any of them supervising any of their patients as the fear that their souls would be taken held their hearts in an unending deadlock. The Thing had already possessed the minds of those who were supposed to be strongest, who rage on about clutching the guts of their friends as they died of a bayonet charge, who's to say the same thing would happen to them?

Yet, even after all of the danger proposed to the girl, even on her way to her father's room, she walks in and out with her eyes closed. It was like a daily routine. One of the deadliest, they figured.

Whatever the case may be, they never dared touch or confront her about it, though.

Not since she first visited, anyway.

Either God truly _was_ with her, or she was simply the witch. They sincerely wished for it to be the latter. She doesn't act remotely Christian.

Still though, they couldn't help but wonder: every now and then, bouts of laughter and the sounds of a violin emerged from the Inflicted's room. How on earth did that man stay sane for his daughter? Granted, the priest _did_ spend extra time in his room compared to the others, but the effect should leave no difference whatsoever regardless, right?

Right?

In the meantime, they sat and pondered as they ate amongst themselves, pouring over their theories as to which of her actions was which. On some occasions, full-blown debates ripped through the table – a rattle to some of the townsfolk passing by the monastery where they ate.

So much so were the holy servants engrossed on this extra-terrestrial that they barely noticed the trees stirring to sleep, the leaves shedding leaves from their web-like limbs, or the sheer number of thievery that wracked the city almost to its penniless whim.

If only they knew that this adrenaline junkie had more to her than met their naked eyes. And, had they known about the flights Gal and her dragon cut the wind through, the ridiculous raids they somehow managed to pull and the flirts with violent confrontations they got involved within that gossiping timeframe, they wouldn't be far from the truth.

Well, whatever this situation entailed or how their conversations may turn to, they each had a general consensus that they could adhere to.

That God was at play, somehow.

Somehow.

And that makes it all the more disheartening when touching on who they were supposed to _really_ care for.

Their approved visits from the old fisherman was so suspicious that you would mistake them for being blind.

 _Thank the Lord that He had made it possible for him to lay out his plan._

* * *

 _Woo-hoo! to transitional chapters said no one ever._


	10. Seizing a Presented Opportunity

_One cold Autumn later..._

As far as Gal knows, this lunch conversation near the factory bar could go on forever, what with her worker-friends continuously venting about how their lives are _literally_ worse than the plague. And, though it certainly flipped some red switches in her, she wouldn't feel obligated to argue against it should the opportunity present itself again.

It was just too goddamn entertaining, a dragon waiting at their monthly rendezvous with her patience hanging by the slim tid-bits of a tether be damned. The coming snow could bury her alive for all she cared, though only through means of suffocation.

Anna's one tough cookie.

"…and you know what I told her?"

Two utterly entranced faces of glee stare at the storyteller's face expectantly, all shouting along the same line: "What, Krystal? What?"

"I told her," Krystal replies, pausing for the highest surmountable dramatic effect, "to fuck right off."

A mutual hilarity erupts among the group – repelling any form of bar customers that may come their way. "No shit?"

"Mm-hmm. And fucked right off she did. Sauntered away in tears. You lot should have been there: it was glorious. Stuck-up cunt probably forgot about it the next day, anyway. And you know what she had the fucking gall to say right after? 'I hope you have better choices later in life.'" She bursts out hysterical, slamming the table the three sat upon. "Bitch, in what world is that good enough? You have had so many shots at getting a normal-paying job at the factory, and you are telling _me_ that you didn't have a choice? Okay, fine, British are opportunistic exploitative pigs that put a dent on Russia's good name and yadda-yadda, but you have to draw the line somewhere when you yourself are struggling to put _food_ on the table and they are offering you a means to do that. You know, I don't even have the bother to visit her anymore. I am doing just fine making a living in the slums on my own. If she wants to put her smoking ahead of literally anyone else, she can knock herself out. _I_ sure as hell am not losing any sleep about it," she says flatly, wrapping her arm over the person sitting nearest to her. "See? Eli can emphasise."

"Indeed, I can," Eli chimes in, removing Krystal's arm controllingly – further feeding to the flames in their weekly session of mass self-pity. "This time it was the dad that fucked my mother over. Pissed off somewhere to the mainland after he bludgeoned Mom to death. Piece of work, her body was. Glass shards and cigarette burns all over. I only managed to coax the town guards about it only four years after. I barely got past the part where she had a cross lodged in her… you know what? Never mind. I am willing to bet your mother was less happy-go-lucky than the uncle who took me in."

"I mean, that whore sucked cock for a living – her standards can't be that high. Fuck me, I doubt she even remembers the feller who knocked her up with me. Then again, it is not exactly the easiest of tasks…"

"Apples don't stray far if they are from the same tree, I suppo—" out of the blue, a running knee behind her clips with her should, bartering from her a yowl of pain. "Argh, holy... fuck! Look where you are going!" Silence. "Oh, and he is still going along his merry way! What is this, Black Friday?!"

Her two companions simply shrug.

"Ugh, this alleyway has been getting more people coming and going through than the whole of… ever. What's going on...?"

On that end, without so much as a hint of goodbye, Eli ups from her little seat and sprints from their little cranny, leaving her friends to choke on the dust she left.

Gal could only think of one response. "Probably just another hanging."

"Yeah."

Silence writhes the air soon after, both eating what little they have.

Krystal disagrees.

"So, Galina," she begins, redirecting her crosshairs to her with a stuffed mouth, "what's _your_ sob story?"

"I am sorry?"

"Yeah. What's yours? Far as we know, you are the luckiest one here."

She raises an eyebrow to the remark in question, in the motions of ripping a chunk off her apple – mouth still open. "What makes you say that?"

"Well, when your mother went, at least she had an excuse for not being there for you. Tuberculosis, I think it was? And your father; good man. Once, when Eli and I were heading back to me alleyway, I saw him go into the coal mines in pitch black. I almost didn't recognise him apart from the hair. Ugh, if only he wasn't in that damned detention centre. His smile is infectious, I swear; best fixer-upper I have ever seen, bar none. But I don't believe for a second that there somebody that exists in the whole wide world that _doesn't_ have a sob story to tell."

"Umm…"

"Don't have to hold anything back, Gal; our dignities are already soiled."

"Shit, umm… well. Other than Dominika… I guess it would be Vladimir. You remember 'im right? Lanky, slightly bleached hair…"

"Dude, it's only been half a year."

"Yeah? It sure doesn't feel like that way. Happened when we were young; before I met you. Got caught trying to steal a pear from the markets. We were just so hungry; got desperate. We weren't allowed a job at the factory cos we were young, and both of our parents were only getting enough for one meal. One thing led to another and I managed to coax Vlad into stealing the pear. Long story short, he got caught, I didn't. And now he isn't allowed to work in the factory. Like, ever. Because of, because of me. I… sentenced him to death. Even now he insists on _not_ laying the blame on me, but—"

"Guys!"

A shrill voice down their alleyway before them the force of a whirlwind whacks the two girls square in the face, compelling them to helplessly turn their backs. The face of the running-from-death girl just with them soon sharpens. "Eli?!"

"GUYS! GUYS! You gotta come help!" she shouts back, still running.

Gal looks back at Eli as if scrutinising her under a microscope. "Wha...?"

"It's Vladimir! _Our_ Vladimir! He's going to swing the rope!"

Their eyes rupture open in disbelief, their backs sinking under their weight and with their mouths wide enough for a rabbit. "WHAT THE FUCK?!"


	11. The Night Sky, Alight

_An interlude_

Berk's time-clogged chief knew he was in for it when the friend who summoned him leaned by the living room doorframe with his front hinds crossed and his bottoms standing on twos.

The tail ticking and tocking behind him may as well be the human equivalent of a pesticide.

Panting, he wails. "OH, SORRY! Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry; got here as fast as I could." Eyes rolling, Toothless motions his paw pointing inside, to which Hiccup questioningly accepts. "I… I was h-held up at the Hall for a while. You know how it is, with _my_ politics. You should be happy that there will always be the one Alpha in your politics."

Toothless, pursing his lips cheekily, moves on to the nearest linen stack available. Dipping his right claw into the ink spill before them, he writes, _you are just_ inviting _trouble at this point._

"It's true! You have no idea how infuriating it is to hold the Thing. You have one chief that wants to stay as far away as possible from the Belt and another wanting to enact world domination; we don't even know whether there are other lands beyond the belt, you yak—"

 _Hiccup, I am not your safe space for venting._

"Ugh. I know, I know. I just… this chief business is getting to me. Actually, more like caught me and dragged me to Helheim now that I think about it. It feels like at any moment my head will melt from the inside out. How on earth Dad managed, I will never know." He looks down on himself, twirling his one good foot. "Gods, am I a runt."

 _I just knew you would come around one day._

"Not helping."

Toothless chuckles like the cheeky bugger he is, soon writing on the parchment with a serious face. _No, really, what took you so long?_

"I… just told you…?"

 _No, no. The last two Things I have been in – they usually last up to… one, two hours? And then the rest of the remaining day they spend swallowing down their sorrows and crying themselves to a pulp. This time it lasted the whole midday. So, one has to wonder…_

"Uh… no, it is not what you are implying. I _restrained_ myself this time."

 _You and restraint? Lightning would sooner strike me three times in a row; I trust that you had had your mental health checked."_

"Alright, Toothless, I can pinky swear on this because it is true… I did, in fact, restrain myself."

 _To the next check-up, it is…_

"I did!"

 _No, you did not._

"I did."

 _No, you didn't._

"I didn'tn't."

 _Didn'tn'tn't_

"Did."

 _Didn't_

"Did."

 _Didn't_

"FINE, FOR BALDER'S SAKE; fine, I didn't, I didn't! Well, more like… couldn't. You know what the scout's reports mean, right? The small leak in the Aegir's Wall? By the gods, Toothless, do you what this means for the Archipelago? Imagine: a space beyond our already behemoth of a land! All of the new dragons, all new species eve—" Whack. "OW!"

 _I knew it, you little piece of yak shit._

"OK, Toothless, new low. New low. I don't need that kind of profanity on my linen paper!" Hiccup's two hands drag against his swollen eyes. "Mum is going to kill me…"

A draconic chuckle soon meets his ears. _Serves you right._

"Serves me right? Serves _me_ right? Gods, you have such a twisted sense of morality."

Finally, Hiccup claps his hand, ready to assess the situation. "Right. What's the problem?"

 _I never knew your bedroom would be_ such _a hub of activity._

"Wha…? Oh, no. Ew. No. Gods no; Toothless, for shame."

 _Shouldn't it be the other way around?_

"Oh, please don't desecrate the linen any more than it already is. Now I am going to have two women breathing down my neck; fantastic." Closing his eyes, he sighs and inhales the culminated stress inside and out. "Alright. Now, will you tell me what's going on?"

 _I already told you; your bedroom._

"Toothless, don't start no—"

 _I was being serious as well._

"Oh. Well, then. Show me the way, if you will."

Plopping back onto two fours, Toothless navigates Hiccup to the chieftain's resting quarters, the floor moaning ever so subtly following each and every weighted step. Left, right, left the two dragged, the latter praying to Thor that nothing serious would befall upon them. Finally, they reach the face of Hiccup's bedroom door, an anticipating breath escaping Toothless' maw, tries as he might not.

Lastly, the gate cracks and the insides fell exposed.

And like the ill fates of the day had come crashing down upon his very eyes, Hiccup inhales a breath sharp enough to impale obsidian.

Glitters and glitters on scales, protruding his sights and setting the night-sunken room alight, rays of light, splashing across his eyes. Laid on his bed under a respite of bloodied cloth a creature that out its back protruded wings, Gothi standing aside as she prepared her herbs to disinfect its scandalised chest. Adorned on its head, nubless scales, a missing eye and oval ears – mighty claws on its limbs and a figure leopards would right die for.

So shocked was the chief he couldn't make the connection – only seconds later. The figure that laid on his bed, though with scales and body parts defaced, erupts a single image that he could conjure. He had seen a dragon like this before.

Ah, there was no mistaking it now.

Toothless, oh, dear Toothless, after all these years.

His Fury had come at last.

…

…

Well, he was hoping he would see the Fury in slightly less… mortal formalities. Surely, when she inevitably awakes groggily, she _can_ be reasoned and bonded with, right?

Right?


	12. Deal with the Devil

"I am sorry girl, no can do; mayor's orders."

It's been fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of constant arguing with the executioner from the mass expanse of the morbid onlookers, and they had not budged his stance on the matter once. Sweat was beading and her heart was thumping her throat, no, no; Gal knew it, oh God, God—she knew it well: Vladimir was running on borrowed time.

It was only five minutes till that hand touched 12 o'clock.

Vladimir's crying stopped a while ago.

Eli and Krystal could only stand back with torn apart eyelids.

Bringing everything out of her as she looked at him plainly in the eyes, she says: "Yeah? Last time I read the law books it didn't say you can deliberately lower the height of the fall so that he suffocates to death instead of breaking his neck. Please, ser, drop him higher. Let him break his neck. He's not heavy enough; he would choke to death!"

"Given the lack of calcium around here, I am sure his neck would be in tatters at any height."

"Ser, you know nutrients don't work that, and neither do bones. So, please, d-do the right thing and let him die without agony. Unless you indulge being at the top of human depravity?"

Wrong choice of words.

The executioner's brows taper, his mass kneeling from his platform as Gal's initiators always do before making a point. "This matter far supersedes the common peasant, _especially_ you. You think you actually have a voice and that you matter. I assure that is as far from the case as it will ever be. The world doesn't revolve around you or your friend. He committed a crime he damn well knew the consequences of, and he paid the price of being caught. Death at one metre. Right on the tin, as the law says, and unless you want to be on the end of that rope I sugge—"

"Y-you are ignoring the question!"

"And _you_ , little rat, are ignoring my order. Get out."

"What are you trying to do here? Just, what are you trying to do? To… to prove a fucking point? Alright, here it is, point taken; so were the hundreds of examples who walked the plank before Vlad! And it _still_ doesn't justify strangling a person to death. To die by short drop is agonising, sir!" A breath. "You don't happen to notice that they steal because, more often than not, they have no other _choice_. I would know."

He still doesn't budge, not from his bent back, nor his unmoving eyes. This man has a bloodlust. Unsated. Craving. Longing.

Four. "And how, may I inquire, makes this boy different than the rest? You weren't present for _their_ hangings; why should I give _this_ boy the benefit of the doubt?"

"Oh, what a cop-out ans—"

"Alright, tell me. C'mon, tell me then. What makes him so _bloody_ different than the rest? He had his shot at a crimeless life. And he blew it. He's simply paying the dues."

"He was starving, ser, he was starving. He was just eight when he took the pear."

"You know, I happened to be starving as well when I was a boy, too. But I didn't steal. I slept so, so many nights with an empty stomach. The same would go for a lot of us. Yet _I_ didn't resort to stealing. I would be taking somebody else's keepsake, means shopkeepers worked hard for to survive."

"Ser, the shopkeepers didn't work for shit; they were born into it, and their parents just passed down the business to them! All of us were!"

"Then what makes me an anomaly, hmm? You can't change my mind, girl. I am sorry."

Again, again, again.

Wander, wander, her eyes wander to the boy on the plank, but there shant be no writhing from which he sank. Vlad wasn't moving. His eyes were closed, so were his tear stains which laid bare, lonesome, hopeless.

Gal's lips purse till it bled. She motioned back and forth and back and forth and back until she lost the reason for doing so again. She puckers her lips once more. The urge to scream was only growing stronger.

But she shouldn't stall. Her eyes fly to the town hall. Three.

She needed to think, think fast; think, Galina, think, think! Then, like a brilliant, glistening flash of light, an image sped across her eyes, recalling to a certain red beg – or rather, what resided inside its titian chasms. She would miss that rattle of reassurance, and sure, it would settle any problems concerning hunger, but she and Anna were willing to trade that for a life any day.

"I-I, I can give a month's worth of bread. Honest. You don't even have to lower him. Just… make it quick."

"Bribery, now? Hmph. This is new. Sorry, that's going to be a 'no' from me."

"Please, ser, please reconsider. You won't have to worry about f-food for a while, a-and, and you can get back on your feet in the meantime before you have to deal with it again."

A hand heaved out of oblivion abruptly came at her face, five digits facing straight up conveying his very clear and stubborn stance. "Girl, I am not doing this out of need for money. I work for the mayor; I have it under pretty good cover," he stops midway, eyes high praying up to the sky before continuing, "There's another reason we do these executions. Look around you; tell me what you see."

Galina does like so. Bodies, bodies, bodies, every crevice every corner every building every street every, where. Like they were litter. Her eyes ran back and forth between him and the clock, knowing perfectly well that the longer hand was going to touch twelve noon in any minute now; just two.

"There's too many people. Too many people, and not enough food to go around. Dudinka is already a poor enough frontier – so parents are going to have a lot more kids than they need to so that they can keep the food coming in – have their children work with them. It works, but thing is: where would the food come from? With that extra money you can buy food, sure, but what about the supply? We are overcrowded and undersupplied. The mainland abandoned us. Tsars thought it would be too disrespectful for Russia's good name if they were to trade with Britain because their egos were hurt. Not enough farms. Why waste precious resources on criminals when there are many more people deserving that?"

"Like the soldiers in the nursing home? Like the people who waste those "precious resources" the mayor is providing for them? By your logic, we should kill them because they aren't contributing to the town, then! Sir, you are being ridiculous – Vladimir was at his wit's end and he was famished. This boy will be more useful than those soldiers; and h-he is perfectly capable of getting a job in servitude to the town! Please, please give him a second chance!"

"The authorities didn't interpret it that way. He used you for his own gain. He lied to you."

"No, sir, I have known him since he was crawling on two legs. He wouldn't."

A glance above. One.

Her lips and arms and legs and heart were quivering. The executioner saw it, too. His line of tug managed to pull that little bit further.

"Ma'am, I think it is best if you leave this place. Go home. You don't have to stay and look."

Gal stares, stares at her bloodied hands. On it wielded the knife that slew Vlad, red muck sliming from her red-handed digits and onto the ground below. She was responsible for this. For all that transpired because couldn't keep her trap mouth shut.

And Vlad, that unassuming, quiet boy, was the one to forbear her mistakes. Gal knew it – she killed him. She thinks and thinks, and she narrowed all of her options down to just one: one that will be at the cost of herself. But as she thinks about it more, the more convinced she is about her intentions.

An eye for an eye.

One more glance to the clock before the rope cuts. Thirty seconds.

It was now or never. Her mouth unravels and her throat beckons, sounding out the words to their fullest extent for the executioner to hear.

"Let the mayor take me, sir."

That, caught his attention. A child to offer her life for her friend? It sounds as if she lived in Dreamland.

"Before you go through with it, here me out; it would be of benefit for you to know my… offer." She suctions her trembling breath, all but knowing the situations she would be put through. But one's life was worth more than her comfort. "Don't drape Vlad. Take me instead. I know the mayor and his proclivities with his children. He would be more than happy to trade me for a 'criminal's' life."

His tone goes two octaves lower than before, ears adjusting to judge whether Gal was being real. "Hold on. Do you know what on earth you are getting yourself into, lass? He…"

"Yes. I know what sorts of activities he does with his children. That's why I am offering myself on a stake. Is that not what the mayor wants?"

The executioner finds himself at a lost. He wasn't even going to question how Gal knows what his master does; the fat old bastard always let it slip in bars. So, he responds truthfully to the girl. "Yes. But… why?"

Silence was what he got out of her.

He couldn't help but respect that stance.

"Alright. Alright, I-I will lower him down."

True to his word, he does – and Vlad with open eyes harrowed at his descent, confusion wracking his weary mind as he was helped down his grave site. _What happened?_

Their feathers rustled, the crowd ultimately departs, rumbling to themselves over what a waste of time this was. He should have been hanged – let God be the judge of his greed.

Eli and Krystal were not too far away themselves, both hugging and leaning on each other's shoulders. Gal truly did have a silver tongue – though, not in the manner they thought she was.

As the boy could only walk in a daze as his frail bones creak, still oblivious to what had turned about his death day. So much so he didn't even hear the mad footsteps charging from the right of him. He soon feels his body immerse into that of another, two hands constricting his chest. He staggers a bit at the hug before stopping to see who it was. Blond hair graces his eyes, ruffled and unkempt.

This person could only ever be her. True enough, it was.

Gal.

And the first words she spoke would forever stick to him to the end of his days and hours. "I am sorry.

I, I am sorry for everything."

"W… What? W-what happened? Why am I not dead?"

She could only respond with a tighter grip, the first of her sobs now being let out on his raggedy shirt.

"Gal, what's happening? What's wrong?"

Gal reels from her embrace, slouching her figure as if she expected something to lash at her from the shadows. She was close to that assumption. The sound came behind her. Out of the shadows - a murderer.

"Girl! Fulfil your end of the bargain! Let's be off."

His executioner's antics only made Vlad antsier.

"What's going on?"

The man chances a look at his would-be victim. "Nothing you would care to know about."

Vlad turns to Gal, who he assumed who that murderer was referring to. She was already leaving him. "Gal?"

At his question, she tips her figure slightly, a half of her face looking back at him. She leers, a hand gesture forming on her left hand.

A, a gun. Their childhood sigma.

Vlad couldn't help but smile.

But before he could say anything else, she turns her back on him and walks off with the executioner; a hiccup in her steps before catching up to him.


	13. Galina Ivanov, Age 16

_Entry #1097_

 _Thursday, 16 November 1873_

 _A brilliant day_

A girl walked into my bedroom earlier today.

Her skirt was a little on the loose side, her hair was quite frazzled, and her stockings were hung, but other than that, she looked fine. Kristof came in earlier and told me about her, so I wasn't particularly shocked. What I was shocked by, however, was nothing like I ever expected.

When I asked for formalities, she said I could just call her Gal.

But that didn't matter, really, in the grand scheme of things. My insides may as well have been beet-red.

I could tell right from the word go that she liked it. We hit it off the bat, her and I, like we were twin babes – born for each other.

Oh, and that lip _quiver_ , that quiver!

My, when I deal with people her age, girls pile on top of me as if I was the tastiest bit of chocolate they have ever seen (who could blame them), but when she fell down from heaven, it was the other way around. I was entranced. Hypnotised. She had everything a human being could ever want and more, wrapped in a cute little giftbox with a red bow on top.

I was sent down by God to be of service to these girls. No, I don't expect them to love me back, because that would be weird and downright creepy, but I can give them a blueprint of what an ideal husband would be for them. Someone… someone who treats them with integrity and respect; someone who loves them unconditionally for who they are.

Today, God finally gave me the gift I so deserved.

That didn't mean she didn't come with her own ailments, now. To tell myself the truth, she _was_ a bit feisty. A small gesture of comfort and she goes off with a vengeance. It annoyed me at first, but I suppose it was part of God's test – he worked in mysterious ways, after all.

I kept at it day and night, looking to find a penetrable wall. She didn't budge. Only when I presented her with God's way of teaching children to behave did she let me do what I needed to do. I can't blame them for hesitating at first. They can't grasp the enormity of the great blessing the Lord was bestowing upon them.

My mother told me that it was wrong but what she said was total hogwash. I do pity her ignorance, but I have to respect her opinion. Love thy mother, as the Scriptures dictate.

It was such a shame when the day came to an end. She said she needed to go before taking care of her father – to which I detested, seeing that he truly seemed possessed by a demon – but I respect her decision. I am a man for others, first and foremost.

People nowadays simply could not be bothered with such civility. It was as if we were nose-diving into the Dark Ages all over again. But I care.

If she told others, then more would come, thus dousing themselves in my holy flame.

Villagers haven't made a ruckus about it. They know I am God's right-hand man. There's nothing wrong with what I am doing. It is a great community service and people who know me – those who clearly didn't understand the service I needed to provide – they need to think of the sum rather than the whole. Unfortunate, really.


	14. Warm, Hot, Cold, Frosty

Very, very soon, the first drops of a coarse-white fluttered atop Dudinka.

Standing on a cliffside donned on its highest peak didn't help make things any easier for Anna. The cold didn't bother her per se; it was the visual aspect that blared the sirens at her face. Who knew that a little white could make the murky grey village look uglier than before? The colour scheme was just _off_. There was supposed to be a sunset today too, but God turns a blind eye to the weather whenever it was sunset for some reason. Could be a message, could be not. Not that it matters, if Anna was to be quite honest, but she reckons things would be a lot more cheery and lively here if more beauty would grace this pathetic excuse of a town.

In her stubby paws wielded her packet of cigarettes. Stirring, she downs her head again into the insides of the packet, counting the cigarettes once more to make quadruply sure.

…

Nope. She counted only 8 alright.

Fuck.

She was going to toss it away in frustration too, if not for that meddling Galina finally stumbling up the hill and onto Anna's crag. The girl looks out of breath, heaving, no, pleading for air to enter her lungs as two hands made their way onto her knees. The dragon puffs a content breath. "Oh God – took you long enough. You nearly gave me a heart attack; I thought I lost you. Where have you been?"

"Hey, it's not like I, I had to carry," her head tilts to the canvased blueprint of Dudinka she was carrying on her shoulder, "this piece of shit the whole way through, but sure – go on about how I am incompetent. You stuff so much unnecessary shit that you _insist_ you need. You don't need this much for burglary _or_ raids; it's like you are some overprotective mother hen. Oh, who am I kidding? You would be the type to be one, anyhow."

Two claws raise to the dragon's chin, stroking her non-existent beard in stressed, wanting strokes. "Mmm. Really now, big sister?"

"What do you expect me to say? Yes!"

"Maybe I should add more just for safe measure. We could always use another telescope for both of us to use…"

"No! Fuck! Anything but that!"

"Oh, language! Missy, you ought to be punished – tail up your righteous ass."

"I hate you so much."

"As do I."

"Ugh."

"I am thoroughly enjoying this."

"I am not."

"Glad we are able to meet at a crossroads, then."

"Die."

"As should you."

"Bleh."

Finally, she reaches Anna's side, haphazardly chucking the arm-blazing blueprint onto just by where Anna stood. Her hands find their way to her hips and her figure tipped sideways slightly, eyes still ablaze.

"Your Royal Highness, your courier has delivered your package," Gal says, swaying her hands as if she was in a play to the map. "I trust that you should find my service… serviceable. May your days forever be squandered in piles of your own shit."

Gal never bothered to allude to anything English like that before, not since she quit her job as a chimney duster. "Oh? A little British in your veins, I see? I thought you hated them."

"…" "Old habits die hard."

"So wait, on top of being a chimney cleaner you were the Englishman's…"

"Mm."

"Hmph. Explains a lot."

"Shut up." Her cheeks start to purse. "C-can, can we just get this done and over with? I don't even know why we are here. We can decide which to strike just as well in the cottage."

Anna closes in on Gal, almost a claw-slash's distance away. She bends and meets face to face. "Cos guards in this town are sporadic in their guard positions. Remember the Koslov's? Was supposed to be easy pickings but the plan got botched. We saw an entire company."

"That was the one anomaly."

"One too many I am afraid. I can't bust you out of gaol without revealing my identity to anyone, and you know it. Can't get too reckless. At least from here I can see which guard post is which."

"Whatever."

At that, Galina turns away from her.

And after a while, Anna felt as if the cliff turned as cold as the Snow Belt along with her.

* * *

The silence was getting to Anna.

It—everything. It was so abrupt. So uncalled for. And yet she did it. The madman did it.

She stopped… talking. No comebacks, no rebounds, not even an attempt at a rebuke.

Had it been any other day Gal would continue on her verbal assault regardless of who was winning or losing, the silly girl. So stubborn and determined that Anna would sooner fall asleep so that she would win if anything.

Now? It was radio silence.

Considering Anna had known Gal since the day she could remember things, for the dragon to be slightly offed and concerned for Gal wasn't too far-off a judgment.

Something happened while she was away. She knew it – Gal had mixed herself with the wrong crowd. Oh, how she looked forward to seeing Gal admitting her little sister was right again. Anna knew that she couldn't stand the sight of them for a reason. It almost made all that time camping up that conveniently large tree _worth_ it.

HAH! Peeping Tom, her ass. So, she initiates with swollen cheeks: "Something happened."

Gal gives the dragon an odd look. "Umm… what?"

"When you were gone."

"Course something _happened_. I talked the talk with my crew and left. Had a grand time doing so. Unless you are suggesting something metaphorical I can't understand? If not for your own amusement, of course."

"No, not like last time. I am not trying to trick into doing something for my gain and… hmm. Maybe I _am—"_

"Get to the point."

"Alright, alright. Don't need to get pushy." Now that her moment of jest spectacularly and spontaneously combusted into flames and hit the ground in a nosedive, her legs tense as she suctions in the air. "Did anything… bad happen to you?"

She raises her eyebrows at that. "What?"

Yeah, not a great start if Anna was to say so herself. Her smile contorts. "We… can talk about if you want. That's what siblings are for, r-right?"

Soon as she says it, Gal's eyes shoot off to the side, staring off the blueprint – cheeks slinking and brows sinking. Her arms start to cross. "I don't know what you mean."

"Gal, you perfectly know what I mean. I knew those people were nothing but trouble."

"What, my friends? No, they are fine. I just feel… pale today. Not good for the noggin', see."

"I know that you know that that isn't even half of the truth. C'mon. It's good to unclog your systems once in a while."

"And it's no good to be this nosey either, Anna. You are crossing lines that shouldn't be crossed, lines that shouldn't be… oh, oh, OH, that's _cheap_." Breathing pleasant, tingling smoke down her nostrils and into her face for maximum effect, Anna's pupils swell like a balloon till all she saw was two black parcels of spherical goodness. "You'd think by now that she'd know that my heart had turned into rock a long time, but noooooo…"

Anna kills the act immediately. "Hey, that's my line!" she growls.

"Oh, just _shut up_. And the answer's still no, I'm afraid, and that's final. We are here with the wind slapping against our faces for our livelihoods; nothing more…" Her breath falters a bit, stumbling in its steps as her eyes lower to the grey averageness that greeted its visage. "Some things in life are better left unsaid. C-… can we just get on with this already?"

Her eyes roll ninety degrees upward. It was worth a try. Her sister's one tough cookie.

"Fine."

* * *

"Clearly, the cottage's not even in our ballpark."

"No, no, we should go. Only you would stoop this low."

"Hey… no fair. And for clarity, I am, in fact, not a psychopath. I can't wait to haul Dad out of that thing. Beat one of the nurses to a pulp while I am at it."

"Hey, now. They are trying their best. And who's to say that there _isn't_ a demon crashing inside of Dad? There very well could be…"

"I am pretty sure that the bouncers inside him would probably have something to say about that."

"Eh. True. That's not to say they don't need some extra help, though. The Lord can come."

"And by the sounds of it, he also has a habit of only coming when you kneel on the ground to suck his righteous cock, too. How about that?"

"Just a possibility…"

* * *

"…no, no, that's a horrible idea!"

"Got anything better?"

"Yeah. Lots."

"I mean, look at the floor plans. The safe may as well 'been surrounded by .1-centimetre glass. Unless you don't find the roof, the sewage, the side door, the main door, the ventilation shafts and the windows to be quaint?"

Three digits smother her eye sockets, splayed and plain. "Haven't you learnt anything in the past five years? The art of the heist is to deflect attention, not glue them facing up our anal cavities. Look—see? M-E-T-A-L; see, it says metal. Now, can you imagine the amount of racket we'd be blasting for the whole block to hear? Then we're gonna both end up butt-fucked. This is out of the question. We want to keep our reputation an unbelievable legend, remember?"

Steeple claws form and giant eyebrows waggle. "Aren't you forgetting something?"

"No, not really. 8mm of Lebel metal hurts. Like it or not, you got lucky with your hind-leg. That bullet was 18th century trash. And that was a year ago. The Wynsovs probably surrounded the place with lights by now."

"So, you are saying there's a chance?"

"No, no, no! No going anywhere on heists without a definite guarantee of success. The ones that we didn't plan were just plain _sloppy_."

"We still got out alive."

"Yeah, but life seems worth more than fifty roubles to me. Personal opinion, of course."

Anna laughs. "Yeah? Well… sometimes, you gotta take a leap of faith, you know."

Gal growls and breathes the fattest sigh possible. "Argh, there's no winning with you!"

"As all things should."

Her rapidly forming wrinkles crease by the scullery press of her palm. "By my beating heart, I can't take this…"

"Don't, then."

"For… CHRIST!"

"Hah!"

Two shaking hands dig into Gal's dandruff-littered scalp, pure rage threatening to leak from her teeth and onto the ground. Just as she was about to rip the grass daring to consume her tattered shoes, however, she finally catches a glimpse of the sunset. She was so intent on getting back at Anna for what she did, and what she made her do, and, and what she had to do, and… and…

…

No.

Stop it, Gal.

It isn't Anna's fault. It wasn't, and it never will.

That mind of hers was an egg scramble – she didn't have the time to ingest the horizon. She wanders to the edge, away from the scheming Anna.

Seeing this now… Yes. The evening was rather lovely. Seagulls crying and the waves lulling by the shores, the wind blowing and the leaves falling, the colour of soft orange and the Snow Belt just hovering above the waters…

Youngsters having an appreciation of what isn't immediately in their direct paths, if only. With a sight like this, you'd think that life was good; if only she wouldn't think back to how she was sucked into that vacuum of promise immediately afterwards, too.

Anna shouldn't have to deal with this realisation. She was still, by all accounts, a child. Anna wouldn't have known what life had going for her. She's too pure. Too unexposed.

She never got to experience it, first-hand, in the city. The people in it. It's surroundings. The reality of life. Her body prevents her from saying likewise.

Who knows what might happen when she is left to fend for herself? How can she cope doing anything other than thieving?

Yes, yes, she should have the right to know. Right to know, right here, right now. She may win at wit but she's too callous to deal with anything adult. Suctioning in air, she says, "Anna?" Said dragon looks up, annoyed. "Do you have a moment?"

"No, Gal, I am not interested in hearing you whinge about how much of a waste of thirty minu… I am sorry, what?"

"I am not trying to trick or assault your belly with my spaghetti fingers or anything. I have something to show you."

Her paw was in the motion of laying down to take its first step, but she retracts it quickly – its claws shrivelling up. "Gal? Your voice is sounding all subdued and creepy again…"

"I know. I know. But I _do_ have something to show you that's worth your time. Honest."

The dragon eventually gives in. Eventually, after a whole eternity of slinking, she stands neck to neck with Gal, slouching her form. "Usually this is the time when you act all sentimental and I switch my brain off one-tenth through your monologue. Don't mind it either."

Gal had the conscience to give a smirk. "Unless you don't like me spilling on secrets?"

Anna's hindleg stops turning, and her ears erect high. "Oh?"

"Mm. An advice of sorts. There's something you need to know about life."

"Oh, now you have me intrigued. I wanna see how irrelevant and pretentious you are."

"Trust me, I will." She looks longingly at the snow belt again. "Look what's in it. Tell me what you see."

She surveys the area frantically, too narrow to notice what is outside the box itself. "At what?"

Gal offers a lending finger pointing towards the horizon. "The snow belt."

It took a little readjusting of the head on Gal's part before Anna could notice it. "And?"

" _Tell_ me what you see."

She shakes her head with a flabbergasted frown before quickly saying: "Umm… I see snow. Lots and lots of snow."

Gal didn't interpret it that way. "Chaos."

Anna snorts, almost willing her snot to bugger off. "Knew it."

"No, no. I meant it." She sighs. "Now, look below, over to the right just by the factory over there."

"Can't…" Ah. "Never mind."

"Tell me what you see in the farm."

"Uh…" Nothing in particular, really, so much so her eyes uncomfortably twitch to Gal. "Nothing much?"

"Yes. Life's like the two of them. The insides of the snow belt are… chaos for a lack of a better word. But it's running. Every piece is falling into place. No matter what it is always running, producing something, affecting the forces surrounding it – contorting everything to its will – progress. Now look over at that farm again. See its dying crops?" She sees it. "Someday, we all have to grow and branch out of our comfort zones. To think of the sum rather than the whole, even if it means tossing away every norm, every habit, every belief. You can't evolve without making sacrifices. The same applies for the farm, see? The owners are laying their farmhands off. Too many ravens to poach to make a profit – not enough activity to let it run. It's too safe. Too secure. You can only move on if you make a sacrifice – even if life throws everything at you, making you kneel, bleed to death like the belt. Only then when that sacrifice is made will the ravens go and leave your crops alone. Only then can they prosper."

"…"

"…"

Anna crinkles her nose. "You are full of shit, you know that?"

Gal snickers. "I know."

* * *

 **Sorry for the delay. School is eating me up.**

 **Thanks for reading!**


	15. A Moment for Himself

Yeah, nah, he'd rather much cry himself asleep than deal with this. Maybe chuck himself into a pool of lava and see whether his scales would hold while he's at it. Perhaps chug a hundred pints of ale and see whether his liver survives too.

But by the gods, he would do anything— _anything_ to pass the time at this rate. Anything would be better than here, rotting in Hiccup's bedroom corner, waiting, waiting, waiting, almost snoring at this rate. The way he did so to express that fact was remarkably human. Laying his back against a wall – hind legs splayed on the creaking floorboards and a face that inspired contempt.

See, what inspired such insolent thoughts _or_ decisions was a rather simple reason. The age-old enemy of the good people of Earth both young and old. Yes, that's right: boredom.

And Toothless the impatient dragon is currently losing an uphill battle against it. That's to say… by quite a bit.

He huffs, crossing his short, stubby appendages together.

Shouldn't have handed all of those duties to Stormfly, the dragon concludes. She was starving to be responsible for anything other than being on scout duty as of late – he should've noticed. Not that Toothless couldn't empathise her position, though.

It would be hopeless to do anything otherwise. To take that liberty away would be harder than parting a dragon from dragon-nip. Bits and pieces of his memory come and go in that lucid state. All he would remember as he recovered from a high was the oddest feeling of content within his heart.

Whatever that meant. Sighing, he decides to finally get up and see what the goings on was outside. Despite what Hiccup thinks, the dragon _wouldn't_ make a good babysitter.

Oh, who was he kidding other than himself? He probably said that just to be let off the cuff – this room – and go do other useful things. Gothi left quite a while back when there was still sunlight to be had and Hiccup a little later. _"I have to attend something important – take care of the white dragon while I am gone, will you?_ " the hiccup said. And being the good little angel he was, Toothless agreed.

Now he was beginning to believe that his will to disobey his friend's favour should be rectified.

They both probably had it figured out to stay here was a waste of time and that Toothless was the one that should carry the burden.

Nobody would dare enter this house and tamper with the white Fury's health, right? Stupid Hiccup and his inane excuses. This 'chief business' was going to be the death of him soon enough too.

Speaking of the devil, his feline inquisitiveness chances a quick glance at her. Now, he was certain that the dragon was one of his species, that much he and his nose knows – but what was she like?

Yeah, from the outward appearance, he could draw similarities enough. Top to bottom they mostly had the same physique bar the ears, eyes and scales. But what was she like, in everything else?

He had never seen a Fury before; partly because he never got a chance. He was a fish out of water – out of his element. The queen and the Great One—they were straight forward – blast them with his flames till they weren't moving any longer.

But this was a different matter altogether. And quite frankly, this was harder than all of that previous muck combined. Chances are, the Fury before him had convolved with fellow pack members before, seeing as she has no smell of human to speak of and looked most thoroughly wild. So, how was he supposed to handle it? He doesn't know how a normal Fury should act and react, what was fine and not fine, which crossed the boundary, which didn't; he never got involved. It was culture shock without the culture to speak of.

Now he was feeling skitty. His tail twitches. What if he messed up somehow at the first move? Stuffed it all up?

Agh. No use in whining and worrying about it now. Her lurid state doesn't draw any confidence from him that she was going to stir awake any time soon. He would prove to her he was worthy to be in her presence – whatever that meant.

Stepping away to the hallway and passing by the dragon slowly as to not wake her up, his paw nudges the door open, the need for fresh air almost tempting him to forgo any mannerisms of stealth altogether. Soon, he finds himself near Hiccup's porch, looking outside and analysing the village again with his eagle eyes.

Festivities were dying down thankfully now that the sunset was slowly being starved of fuel, replacing the night sky with that bit of navy blue to make things slightly visible for the humans. Children being ushered back inside by disgruntled and slightly tipsy parents, the guard watch lighting lamp posts all around, the little ones still scurrying about and playing catch with their humans, the last batch of dragons are exchanging goodbyes with their humans as they take off to the Isle… Damn it. He was getting all depressed again; it wasn't really in his interest to seek out a mate for the sole purpose of producing spawn and all – that much he learnt from Hiccup's wisdom and civility – he is perfectly content without it.

He just wanted… _family_.

Some packmate he could connect with, some packmate who could truly consider him part of something larger. He shakes it off at the mere thought. Better not to get emotionally attached to all that muck when he had both a kingdom and village to run. That would compromise him _quite_ a bit. He looks towards the docks.

Something to distract him in the meantime.

Visiting chieftains are heading back to their dragons now, thank goodness. Some were shaken by the mere prospect of a domain beyond Aegir's Wall, others indifferent.

He was simply thankful that they were leaving, their dragons with them. Those rascals never had the mind to settle down whenever these meetings happen, come to think of it. Always looking stir something wild to keep things interestin— _CRASH_!

Toothless jumps, an inch away from cratering a hole on the veranda. His head buzzes to the source of the noise, an inescapable trait for something falling down. His ears tell him it came from… Hiccup's room.

Shit, shit, shit. That white little snowflake wasn't supposed to wake up this early! Gothi wasn't even back yet from that damned hut; Hiccup was too busy establishing further relations with clan chieftains with whatever bullshit trade routes he was proposing. His Adam pulses in his throat. Goodness – he was going it alone!

But what happened next, immediately after he set a foot in the house, made his claws clinch the floor in a sealing embrace. A sound. What that sound was, he didn't know. Not enough to draw conclusions yet. But, if his ears heard correctly, he didn't want to think of it. For all of the Norse he had learnt, he never expected it would only work to alienate and confuse him more. For all the Norse he had learnt, he never could decipher that scream. Little did he know that it would change his perspective on life forever.

"GALINA!"


	16. The Fragile Grass Crunched

**_Yeah, I know. No excuses._**

* * *

She had to admit, the cottage had seen better days. Not that Anna didn't have any part to play with the current state it is in, now. Unwashed utensils on the floor, cobwebs on the ceiling. The furthest to the left from the entrance she could see some of the loot she brought back from hunts, catching dust as traders hailing from other regions simply don't travel near Dudinka anymore; bad for business. To the immediate right, the little corner where she, Gal and Dad began a project Drawer Installation, some of the planks Gal had "meticulously" nailed were laying on the floor. Dead. Unmoving. Unchanging.

Neither of them was around much – which certainly was a contributing factor – but to leave this place in such a state is inexcusable. Dad wouldn't stuff up.

Dad really was the glue that was keeping the family together. The second he was taken away, it all fell to pieces. Both of them noticed themselves their own mannerisms, make no mistake; they were not in the best state of mind after his kidnapping. Not as violent as the charred remains of a snapped twig, though not as soft as a dandelion parting from its seeds. But he had a place.

Now he is a cripple. Same old, same old for them.

The lines were being blurred now in Anna's eyes. Sooner or later one of them is going to erupt. Gal was already drawing up plans to fake Dad's death in the cabin and take him home. Silly, emotional girl. If he was dead and came back for work, the suspicion levels would be off the Ritcher scales. If not, then how is the girl supposed to explain they had taken up… Burglary…

…

The dragon lowers her optics to the floor. They have to see him again, just one last time. Gal better make an effort to avoid bringing up that topic.

But that hardly mattered now, she determinably reminds herself and her stupid, impulsive conscience; for now is the time for the scolding of a certain uncaring thief!

"GALINA!" Anna shouts into the cabin.

A pained groan comes loitering down the cottage upon the dragon's request. The sun was barely out if one was to take a peek out the window; what is this girl's goddamned vendetta? "What, you dumbbell?"

Anna's shoulder leans on the doorframe to make a point. All this time waiting and anticipating outside with her red satchel and there Gal was, pouring herself a cup of bubbling coffee on the table opposite the accuser. As if she couldn't care enough to hold on to her promises… no British influence, her ass. "Thought we were gonna visit Dad today."

A dismissive puff of laughter was what she got in retort. "And we are."

"You damn sure don't look the part, though," two exasperated claws come swiping the air at Gal's figure, "you are still in your pyjamas for Pete's sake – almost noon, even. They are going to add some sisters soon at this rate. We should go. Quick."

Gal yawns the densest yawn she personally has ever heard in response, one hand chafing her engorged eyes and the other still brandishing her poor excuse of a coffee cup. "As I said, I came back late from a get-together and I… need some shut-eye. Vlad and I had much to talk about. Poor boy's still got the wide eyes."

Her word, her sister had missed her insinuations entirely. It may as well had been written in the sibling contract that the littlest would have to spell out everything for their 'elders'. Her eyes land on some orange leaves for a moment, shrivelled and unkempt, as they wisp into the house with auburn rays lighting the path.

Her ears droop, shoulders guarded against herself now. She steps a tad closer to her.

"That's beside the point, Galina. You have been coming home later and later every night, visits with Dad are getting shorter and shorter every progressing week – and don't tell me I don't notice or tell me it's cos of your friends. You can't shed the position of the moon or the Sun from me, and there's only so much time you can spend with friends until one party gets irked." Anna stops to collect her breath, only creasing her brows further when Gal gives her the cold stare. "What's so special in that town that warrants you missing out on family? Why is it you _always_ go around midday? Why, Gal? Why? If something's bothering you, please tell me, don't keep to yourself. I am your sister for a reason. I am here for you. Let me help out."

All along their confrontation, the winds carried the faintest scent of liquor, and Anna made the connection immediately. Something had gone awry.

Humans may have to be coaxed to empty their pockets before the world seemed an alright place to live in, but Anna, or so she found out, only needed half a pint.

She found out she didn't need to be in the sky to feel so free, a trait to which Gal would envy her so. _Only a fifth of the stuff but all the same effects, the lucky bugger._

But alas, they have fallen on hard times as they have alluded to countless times before, and she reluctantly had to give up the drunken business. Gal vowed to her that she'd steal brandy whenever she could, however, when the sun wasn't looking. Anna would squeeze her to a tin can on the verge of tears if she did.

Her digits delicately caress her receptive scales. Darn, she had trailed off. Again.

That usually meant she was losing track of her judgments entirely. Damn. She had to work on that. The same can't be said for Gal. She had trouble forming one entirely if Gal's frown gave any sort of indication.

Anna pushes her efforts once more, futile as they may be. "Please. Trust in me. I wanna help you. _Dad_ wants to help us. We are…

we are crumbling."

With that, her eyes shot up from the table.

The final straw had ruptured. The twig broke. Guilt and shame and anger sweltered to a pot of molten magma. Up and up and up it went the volcano's body.

And, in glorious, picturesque sight, it spews.

Gal jolts as if shocked by a rifle. Bubbles mixed with saliva froths in her mouth.

Her morning coffee fell and spattered.

It canvases the table.

An inextinguishable wrath washes over her scowl. Her pupils turn to the slits of a snake.

"You know what, Anna? No. No. I have had enough with you. I have _expressively_ told you to step off your moral high ground, and yet you still stand there, acting like some guardian angel," a finger points at Anna with a malice only a monk could suppress, "you know what? I wish I had left you there, Anastasiya. You can never keep to your own _fucking_ business for once, can you? You don't know the shit we pulled to keep this family together. You don't know the shit Dad pulled to keep you safe from the village. All these years I have covered your ass without asking anything in return. A creature Dad and I could have just easily sold out and lived in a fucking mansion. You wanna know why I saved you? Mommy told me to. And I could have saved mother from illness with your scales. But I didn't. I didn't because of _you_. And you always retort and degrade me and make me doubt myself each and every time you step foot into my personal life!"

A tremble. Gal's eyes bled a colour black. "You don't know how much of a nightmare every waking moment is for Dad and I. You don't know how much of a _thorn_ you have been ever since I saved you from the snow. _You_ don't know how much better off our family would have been if we didn't have to isolate ourselves from civilisation. How **happy** we could have been if we didn't have to constantly watch our backs just to protect you. If it weren't for _you_ , we would have been normal! Mother could have gotten to the town in time _._ Dad would have had a better job if you didn't lose his calculations. So you want me to go with you? Fine. Fucking fine. I am tired, Anastasiya. I am so _fucking_ tired. But I will do it, Anastasiya. I will do it for… you… you…"

Two trembling hands shot up to cover her mouth. Waterworks barraged her sight. Her throat stutters a sob.

Anger… she let it control her. For all the effort she went through to control her impulses, it failed when it really mattered. Anna… she doesn't deserve this.

Her eyes risk a little light. There, her sister stands stiffly from the doorway, staring meekly at the cold ground. She analysed scrutinisingly at her purpose.

What was she to them? A burden. That's all she was. A burden whose sole existence only brought people pain and suffering.

Death.

She closes her eyelids. Nausea boiled in her stomach. Her blood crooked as still as tar. Almost wistfully, listlessly, the dragon turns to amble from Galina. Out the door she went, her claws combing the grass below. "I… didn't know how much I cost you two. God, I am sorry. Dad hates me. And yet I pester him and… I am sorry. I am such a parasite. It's my fault," her eyes twitched to her waist, almost too shy to stare up to Galina again, "I won't be a burden to you both anymore."

Gal stood in horror. Oh, no, no, no. Anna… she's walking out of the cottage. "Oh... oh, God, no. I—I am so sorry, Anna, I, I didn't mean it! It's just… oh, God. It came out. It just came out… I am sorry, alright? I am so sorry. It's not your fault. It's not…"

But silent the dragon remained. And steadfast was she in her stagger. In stumbles she trailed off into the forest, the grass being crushed and cut, reminding her how much destruction she wrought with each and every step.

The trees would bring her comfort there.

There she wouldn't bring any suffering to others anymore.

Gal runs out, pleading for Anna to turn. "Anna! Please! Come back! I didn't mean it! I didn't mean it…"

But silent still the dragon remained. And without so much as a look back, her shadow slumps into the trees. Hoping to never be seen again.

Gal slinks to the field of grass, weeping her eyes out till they felt as parched as the desert.


	17. It Grew Darker Today

The last two hours of Gal's life were spent contemplating where on Earth had her sister sauntered off to.

It had only brought her more despair to realise she didn't look out for her enough to make even a good guess.

Of present moment, her legs and lungs felt as if they were on the cusp of crumbling; the beaten path leading their cottage to civilised lands seemed to stretch every stride she took. Further and further she carries her battered heart and yet the landscape seemed only indifferent to her. Cold. Uncaring. Spat callously was the soil beneath her feet, the forest's raggedy breath reaching its tendrils and harvesting her of any willpower left in her blood.

But she was defiant. She would be strong. Even as the hair had cobbled onto her vision, her strength, her resolve had not faltered once in this endless, restless pursuit; the very thought that her sister may die because of _her_ failings was all she needed to thrust her form further.

Inside, Gal deliberated. Anna wouldn't be one to deliberately act out of impulse or walk aimlessly to God-knows-where due to meekly emotions; she was a shrewd dragon. A calculating one, too. She had to have a set goal each and every move she took. An overprotective mother hen could only hold back so much temptation, after all.

Ponder, ponder, yonder – her feet crass the ground in quick, decisive strokes… All the while wandering her mess of a mind for an answer.

A seagull cried when its silhouette had shrouded the sun's gaze when a click was heard.

Her black-addled eyelids expand further. Her hands ball into fists. She wanted to kick herself in the head for not thinking about this earlier.

Dad's asylum.

Where else would she have gone? Anna told her herself just before, damn it – where else could she have been? Gah! No wonder Anna left her; she was a goddamned wreck.

A sigh trembles shakily out of her lips. That would simply have to be a personal matter she would settle later: two very, _very_ important lives were now dangling by the edges of a cliff. A meander quickly turned into a sprint, and she soon finds herself on the road to town.

* * *

Moments pass. The sky darkened and drew a faint duskiness in the atmosphere. And she could finally see her target now, her sprint freighting her lungs to its apex.

Dudinka.

Its outer walls hung defiantly overhead, generations of history, culture and stubbornness ingrained on its wooden surface. Slowly, slowly, the walls rose over Gal as her mad dash endures. Attention soon sprung among the awake and walking dead. Curious, dreading eyes pry at Gal. A burning smoulder in the air made their eyes itch.

Where's a girl like her supposed to be this early? It's Sunday, for Sabbath's sake! Still, neither of them bothered to question her or confront her. They still stuck to a belief that have served them, and the town's legacy for all these years. To let Dudinka's wooden planks spoil and the garbage collect maggots and decay. To let the gravel underneath them shatter and the air around them suffocate. To let the world come razing through them as make their only stand. To never change. Besides… how could they? Why _should_ they? They would only end up shrivelling up and dropping like flies – too small to be nothing but a nuisance, too young to do nothing of significance.

Unbeknownst to Gal in the meanwhile, she has also taken to responding in kind: to tear down their viewpoints of life entirely. She was a _force_ for change.

All the while she was running, it never occurred to her that the smell of smoke should be cause for worry.

It was not until she spots two familiar figures scampering in her direction with faces so tired and withered it would give a lolling Pitbull a run for its money did her stomach churn. It only brought to her more bewilderment when Eli and Krystal began to screech bloody murder. Dreaded rain began to trickle down them all.

" **GAL! HELP!** "

To hear such raw, animalistic terror from them… By God, there must be an inferno raging somewhere!

…Ah, fuck it, the Anna problem can wait just a bit longer.

Dropping her initial trepidations, she ran after the two girls. They hurriedly took a tight turn from the town square. It didn't take Anna long to catch up as she was planning on passing there already. But the similarities seem to match up too perfectly. Her heart skipped a beat when her friends ran through three of the pathways Gal was meaning to go before.

Oh. Oh, god. Dad couldn't be…

What was once a simple act of goodwill on her part morphed into one of hysterical anxiety.

Her eyes began to tear. Her legs become numb. The surroundings began to blur. Houses seemed to tumble upon each other, bricks laid bare soon bled blood. White noise took over the villagers' screams when the source had drawn nearer. Gal could only go off by heart now, the girls ahead of her turning into mere circles of lifeless colour.

She dragged her eyes to the buildings they passed.

The Petrov's.

The Smirnov's.

School.

Church.

Kozlov's.

A corner.

Lilies.

Then.

 _Pitter._

 _Patter._

 _Pitter._

 _Patter._

Fire. Fire up the winding hill. The grass laid charred. A trail of blazing flames through them.

Her eyes bored. Into the flames. The cottage was burning. Daddy was burning. Daddy was burning.

Daddy was burning.

Fire licked from its blood-streaked eyes as smoke rose up the black-coloured sky. She can't find him. She can't find daddy. Nor his scarf. Nor his pebble necklace. Nor his brown coat. Nor his glasses.

An agony uncaring and feral ruptures through the cracks Gal's frail heart. Breakneck, a paralysis wracked her tiny frame, knees wobbling like fish washed ashore.

Her shaking fingers douse her eyes in piercing darkness. Her knees collapse.

She felt so alone. So alone.

Dancing in the dark. Stabbing her skin till her guts lay out and feasting and scrumptious.

Then, like a sudden flash of lightning on a vicious, blustery night, out came from her came the roar of a banshee to rival the gods. It tore through the land and the misty mountains, the waving forests, the horde of grass, the roaring seas, the entirety of the continent shrivelling them into dusky fragments of nothingness.

And then.

Quiet.

Vacant, quietness.


	18. How to Die Inside

_Another interlude_

* * *

It was only after his falling forehead had met face to face with the edge of a conveniently placed wooden desk did Toothless really grasp the gravity of the situation.

 _'Balls!'_ he mouths as they kiss.

Soon enough, he mentally finds himself on a first name basis with faeces once again as his paw scrambles to ratify the damage control.

…

Mm;

he had it figured out a good ten seconds was enough before picking up the slack. And he honours it. He quickly mulls over his gallery of thoughts as his form recuperates itself again, attempting to recount what in Balder's beard had happened the past two minutes.

Only five seconds pass this time before his gradually rising figure stumbled: the Fury – the white one – had prematurely awoken from her traumatically-induced daze. Oh, and the famed noise he had heard just prior to the bump on the road? He has dismissed that claim. Balder was a stuck-up little prick with a stick up his ass so high it had acted as his throne. He didn't have the care to _give_ them vocal chords.

Oh, forgot to mention to himself before, she was also _probably_ on the verge of inadvertently setting this wooden house on fire if he doesn't get there in time—he hurriedly reminds himself.

Panting, he sprints as fast his four hinds could take him into Hiccup's bedroom.

And…

Hopefully, his fellow dragoness would have a slither of intelligence to make the connection that wood and fire wouldn't go well together. For either of them.

Toothless had been progressing so darned well too, until his muscle ligaments seemed to enter in some form of not-moving-because-he-was-scared-fucking-shitless trance.

He highly doubts she would be ever able to navigate Hiccup's labyrinth of a house should that most unfortunate event occur. Then, she'd to succumb to a mild case of overheating instead – and then she'd croak in an awkward position likely dazed and confused. By the gods… why couldn't They have considered of this most unfortunate weakness?

His heart soon feels the incessant need to drill itself into shape all of a sudden. Juddering his fears away at the sight of the bedroom door, he soon reminds himself how politically significant this event would be.

…or try as he might.

 _Sigh._

Apparently, delving deeper into that motif of encouragement as some sort of vain attempt to appease himself wasn't going to cut it.

Back in the good old days, Hiccup and himself had taken to documenting every square inch of uncharted land until where Aegir's Wall permitted them not – discovering all forms of new species along the way. The fact that even after all of that trifling in other lands' businesses they still couldn't find his kind was not lost on him. It also wasn't lost on him that he, as life had had it, been served one of them on a silver platter.

Joy.

Also also also, the right amount of capacity for a political shitstorm to occur, he soon realises.

Huh? Hovering above treacherous domains and sticking your gob into other peoples' businesses by kidnapping them? No, he can't see how that would _scream_ deja vu.

Groan. Well, whatever it is, he certainly didn't want another Bewilderbeast incident to occur, no ser. He would like his mind to be kept from being probed by some outside force, thanks.

The black dragon ruffles his ears. If his worst fears were to indeed come to life, he needed to be a decent ambassador from one society to another.

He _desperately_ needed to appear alpha-like to make a good first impression. Like, as of now. As it was, he never had gotten any experience with – he shudders – **diplomacy** , before… Hiccup usually being the brains and him being the… angry bull standing menacingly in the background.

It certainly wouldn't do well for him if someone was to state bluntly he was also failing both of these tasks at present. HAH! Who would have thought a meet and greet could be so stressful…? Gods, how on Earth does Hiccup do it…

Having no other choice at the moment, he begrudgingly chooses to settle somewhere in the middle. A small, little peek inside for what's to come.

Unfortunately, that slight nudge of the door with his claw was all it took for his intended trajectory to go twenty times over. In other words, it swung wide open. Swoosh; gone… Damn it.

He licks the roof of his lips. Maybe he _was_ trying too hard.

Sighing, he submerges his head in the orange-velveted room, the dying sun's rays blasting a cacophony of colours, baptising it in fire. The jaw keeping his act together soon depressed into one of uttermost worry.

Lying on the floor slouching her posterior was the Fury, gazing longingly at the window flushing fiercely before her. Well, it seems that the dragon in front of him was, as he had predicted through years of experience, disorientated at the sight of the furnishings of humans. That was his one saving grace.

However (rather unfortunately, he adds), or so his noxious curiosity had determined for him, this _particular_ dragon had displayed a facial expression that far supersedes the pay grade so many others had set for him before.

Instead one of fright and anger and confusion, she bore an expression so many grieving humans had come to adopt when their loved ones perished.

She looked, she looked…

Numb.

Now, he doesn't know personally whether it was the right word to desecrate from the Norse scriptures, but he _had_ been told appearance was not mutually exclusive to objectivity, in a sense. Perspective – yes, that's the word. It was all a matter of it, and from his perspective… his head quickly tremors left to right from such thoughts. Gah, tangents… he wonders how he had not been whacked on the skull when he had begun spending time daydreaming from the start. Now, it was becoming nothing but a nasty habit.

Hiccup was a bad, bad influence on him – an imprint so deep in his soul he'd rather not like to admit it out loud.

 _Gods_. He breathes a deep breath to reassure his conscience, knowingly predicting it would be probably an endeavour which would bear no fruit. _Now isn't the time for dilly-dallying_ , he convinces himself. So, he enters a room with a forged smile on his face and a swagger that would rival the vanity of rainbow dragons. Regal-looking he hoped, rather dashing in appearance… by the gods, did he inwardly say _dashing_? What was this dragon _doing_ to him? What on Earth...?

Well _,_ now he thought he looked stupid.

Great.

In fact, he was about to just make amends for his previous actions by simply walking to the dragon before he was interrupted again.

That claim earlier he dismissed due to his misgiving it was one of the symptoms before insanity? He was looking to bring it back.

The blue eye the dragon possessed seemed to reel a bit at the sight of his unscrupulous look. She simply said: _"Bylad. Bylad… Ya proshu proshcheniya. O Bozhe... gde ya?_ _Kto ty?"_ , is all. So why did he look like he wanted to toss himself out the window then and there?


	19. Her Piece of Flesh

_Drag, drag, drag,_ Anastasiya's paws trailed as she trudged numbly along the moulded forest floor… all the while wracking her head for an answer: what was wrong with her?

Gal said it best: she was merely a parasite – a blight on her family's wellbeing as well as their very lives – a leech that sucked them of their passions and emotions and souls and happiness. Merely husks, now. Husks caused by… caused by her.

The signs were all there, she just hadn't had the sensitivity to notice them.

Gal had gone into town a lot more and Dad was goading their visit schedules further and further into dusk. They were there all this time. She just… God, she was so fucking stupid!

A brief sob quivers out her shaking throat. Blackened, sunken eyes dare to pour a measly tear. Her treads stutter in their wake.

Long has she accepted the basis behind her exile, being that Galina has finally decided to end the torture on her own terms.

And her word was final to her. The dragon would be hard-pressed to find a better decision maker. Any plans she might have concocted without the girl's supervision was a fool's errand. On more than one occasion she would have gotten herself killed if it weren't for Gal's advice. So, who's to say she wasn't doing to save her and her father's skin? From her?

…

Yeah, 8mm of lebel steel _would_ hurt.

With a lump in her neck, she guises her eyes to the sky, now a grey blanket of frivolity and chaos – a cooling mist slowly rolling into the timberland around her at her welcoming behest.

Without so much as a hint of hesitation, she doubles down on her efforts to reach her intended target in time.

…

…that is, until precious seconds pass before her mood falters once more. _Oh, this trip is pointless_ , she mentally gripes _._

Even if she didn't know in absolute certainty, Dad was probably sick of her bothersome presence by now. She doesn't even know whether her father would want her to even step a single _paw_ in the cottage. No one deserved to be in the rampant toxicity that is her form. No one should deserve to suffer so.

But her shattered heart didn't know where else to go, who else to turn to. All too often she relied on her family for assistance. Guidance. Now she would receive the full brunt of the consequences associated with it. She had the mental maturity of a damned hatchling.

A sombre hue of light as blue as the ocean soon shines through the gaps of the tree branches; her paws crunch the twigs below.

Anna took it from the lightning strikes over the horizon that the clouds had to relieve of their burdens.

She is nearing Daddy's cottage now, she can tell – having taken this path far too many times for her to reasonably contemplate. The most mundane tell-tale landmarks soon came into view. A corpse of a dead bird being the first of many recognisable places, of course. She vividly remembered first coming across the thing; one of Gal's and Anna's many adventures through the maze that was the Dudinkan Forest. Anna herself wanted to toss it away due to the sight, but Gal saw to it that that was precisely why the corpse shouldn't be disturbed.

It was way too memorable an object not to be the start of a path the dragon could safely trail. Her throat rumbles deeply as the scene plays out picture-perfectly. There Gal goes again with her planning ahead and being more mature than Anna will ever be. She… she hopes, even if impossible at this rate, that they'd reunite once more. Maybe, maybe convince her through those words of hers.

Her breaths quake. Wait, no, no, no – that was precisely what got her into this mess in the first place. Ugh. No wonder Gal wanted her gone; she was a goddamned wreck.

It took some mighty encouragement on her part to continue on the trail without pounding her self-esteem to a pulp every ten seconds. That encouragement? The comfort of a father's hand, holding her tightly like a babe wrapped in a snug little blanket. By all accounts, she should dispel that notion as soon as she thought of it. But it was hope.

A fool's hope, but hope it remains.

And when there's hope, even a slither of it, one can always find determination from it.

She was nearing the second to last landmark now: a shrivelled-up mess of a shrub, nodding drowsily at the cold wind blowing through the forest. It was just five more minutes until her path in life would be shaped irrevocably with a few simple words.

'Tis was a linear path from the get-go – right from the start. For all her life, she and Gal and Dad and Mum were railroaded on tracks which had gone anywhere but sideways. Always straight, always unmoving – the recognition documents that kept her family tied indefinitely to Russia, the inability to truly be recluse cos of scouts and spies, the government being able to overrule any protests the people made, full stop. It never really was a fair game.

Anna intends to change that.

* * *

There! She sees it. The last landmark by the tree moss. Not even partaking the courtesy to perceive the outside world or otherwise, she stumbled her way to it, the plateau bending to her every whim and might.

In fact, her mind was so set on her objective, so obsessed over it – she could not bother to consider the when and how.

And the when and how was fast catching up to her scaly hide. For not ten seconds later a smell sunk into her nostrils. Gross, uncoming, coarse. But her mind was a detrimental thing – so detached and misinformed from reality she barely offered it a shrug. It was only when she saw what was in front of her there and then did the first of her alarm bells rang. Smoke, billowing through the air like apparitions through the forest moss… rising up and up into the skies. The second thing Anna sensed that rubbed her sixth sense the wrong way was the barest trace of Gal's scent, latching onto the wind as if it was dashing across her snout.

She eventually chalked it up to be her state of mind, nothing more. Step, step, step. She could feel the earth trembling under her weight, giving, giving, giving.

Just.

A state.

Of mind.

But, life does not indulge in the spreading of such lies, false as humanity didn't want it for nought.

That life was fair; merely a concept to fantasise about in old wives' tales. It never really was fair. Evolution was their payment instead.

It was only until she was not two dozen steps away from the cottage door when the third alarm bell that pulled her back to reality had sounded. Across the hill, over Dad's cottage, the ear-splitting sounds of panic and horror met her ears.

Chaos.

The shrieks of children scrambling for the comfort of their parents' arms. The screams and crying of women and men following suit.

That did it.

That, did it.

Her burdened heart stops.

 _Oh no._

Few and far between, her paws push against the ground in denial as her trembling eyes brought themselves to an image which had etched in her mind forevermore.

Anna wails.

"NO! NO! DADDY! NO, GOD, NO!"

In front of her, a heretic amalgamation of all the horrors of the world displayed before her.

The cottage was bathing in flame. T

Its inhabitants were burning. Smoke rose.

Daddy was dying. Daddy was dying.

Daddy was dying.

Tears from the flames of hell went up the cottage, a pyre.

"GOD, WHY?!"

A stake for where its inhabitants had become God's personal plaything for the next hour. A fire where the devil's hands sprung from the charred ground and climbed onto her scales and tore it open and feasted on her rotten flesh.

"WHY?!"

But there, there as she wailed, her eyes catch, catch something laying on the charred grass, something that implicated far worse fates than she could ever have comprehended. Gal's red bag, lying open.

Its contents, spilt. Gone.

And two pairs of footsteps from it that dared to squirm back the way she came.

* * *

In that fell forest Anna trudged with haste and yearning, through its sodden soils and dead leaves, the wind screaming and battering against her ears whilst a drowning, consuming darkness soon loomed and succumbed her sight.

 _"Galina… come back…"_

Her claws dug into the barks of trees for support every time she lost her footing.

 _"Come back…"_

She won't lose her again.

 _"Please…"_

She won't.

 _"I am sorry… Please…"_

A riot of foul odour began to trample her grip on sanity as she dove deeper.

 _"I am s-sorry… come back…"_

Deeper.

 _"Come back…"_

Deeper.

 _"Come back…"_

She is begging Him. Begging God.

 _"Please. Please. God, please…"_

An incline of a hill. A trail forcefully drove through it. Deadwood shrouding it, consuming it. Her head spins around. On the ground, she sees it.

A bloodied knife on the grass.

A cross where Jesus was suffocating to death.

And an old man. An old fisherman.

An old, battered, mad man kneeling next to it, kneeling before of a piece of bloodshot flesh as he raises his hands high.

A man which bore the face that would strike the priests of God into submission. A man who would send the Devil running and screaming in terror.

And a gurgling, shaking Gal who laid on the ground before him.

 **"God, save unto our souls with this offering of tainted flesh. BEHOLD, O MIGHTY LORD ABOVE! THE DEVIL'S BEATING HEART!"**

With a pitiful squelch, he raises his gory hands proud and high. In it, a tiny red-oval thing beating and spurting a smother of blood pussed onto his face, more, more, more.

She could see it, her little Gal frothing slimy bubbles from her mouth as her hands shook. Her face and neck and legs and eyes won't stop shaking—they won't! And the man keeling in front of her corpse cackles and cackles like he was all but a rabid ape as his knees splice onto the ground and his teeth sneer a murky red.

Like a leech his eyes sucked, squirming and writhing at her at the thrill of gore, a shrill screech bleeding her ears dry and a crushing hand choking and smothering her throat like a fly caught in a spider's web.

She screamed and screamed until her throat could barter no more, cried and cried until her ducts ran out, begged and willed until her very being was crumpled into a tin can. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't breathe. GOD help, HELP!-she couldn't breathe!

Her waking eyes watch, and she sees him! Sees the puppet master above her, and his fingers move and laugh and sing as she dances on the stage, toying – dead corneas on his face, staring, STARING! – an endless grey, grey as the misty fog that clouded her heart.

The spectators see her, surround her in the forest, choke her: laughing and laughing till their hearts content. "You deserve it!" they spit with great glee as they pointed fingers at her. "You **deserve** it! You deserve it and you _know_ it; useless waste of space!

"HAHAHAHAHAHA! You fall back on your god and your doctrine because you can't take any responsibility for yourself! You don't have a spine! No wonder you couldn't save her. You are _useless_. As useless as the cancer growing within your brain and heart; as useless as the fly latching itself onto your scales; as useless as a collector's partisan!

"Useless! Useless! And now look at her, her eyes open wide, arms shaking and her throat tearing itself apart! Help! Anna! GOD! Please! Help! Help! HELP!"

 **HELP**!

Anna screams.


	20. Amongst the Dead, Peace

All set.

Her little red bag was set. Her tears were all dried. The cottage was clean. The sun was up. Everything was orderly, everything was where it should be.

Everything was fine.

Anna glimpses downwards to what her paws were holding. She lifts the lid of the cigarette pack with a gentle claw. Her head tilts. Her eyes narrow. Only three of them now.

She hums, giving a tranquil nod. It would have to do.

Everything was fine.

She looks back up with a blank stare.

There the urn was, Galina's urn, on the table. A florid, sapphire pattern, loping along its clayish surface. Its top perked pride, its bottom held in trepidation. She would have given Dad one too, but she couldn't find his ashes. Not with all those people around.

The old man in the forest impaled himself in the stomach before she could utter a word. But it was alright.

He was carrying out God's will, anyway. God wouldn't have wanted his corpse interfered with. He was in God's hands now.

Galina and Dad weren't. They were gone now. Maybe He wanted them gone. Maybe they committed an unforgivable sin. God was right. God was just.

Everything was fine.

Her claws dig into the packet she held. Out came from it her last waft. It ignites in a dawdled breath. Smoke flowed out of her mouth. She looks to the window. Midday.

Anna packs the urn and the packet. The bag was a little heavier now. It would have to do. She slings it on her back. The red ribbon on her wings tingles a bit.

Everything was going to be fine.

She steps out the cottage. Her tail drapes around her hinds. The sky looked nice. The overlook would be her last. This was as good as any.

The wind seemed right. The light seemed okay. Her wings heave. She breathes. She was going to get what was coming to her. She was going to repent.

The grass waves. The earth trembles. She takes off.

Everything will be fine soon.

The wind was roaring. The sun was blazing. She sees it. Her target. A white nothingness surging quietly in the distance. The Belt. On its crimson edge, it laughs. A finger raised from its appendages, quaking and mocking Dudinka in all its glory.

It's a funny feeling she still doesn't get used to, the buildings below her being the size of ants. Judging by how the populace reacted down there, she must have taken for nothing short of a demon in their eyes. Her hearing rarely does her any wrong.

Not much off from reality, really, that description. Not that she cared. It will all be over soon. The Belt was going to take her.

Just like Daddy said it would take him. Ironic.

A sigh. She raises her eyes, gazing forward. A single tear runs down her cheek. She frowns. She was going to die.

She was going to get what she deserved. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Everything was fine. It draws nearer. The sober tendrils of cold nether caress her scales. She was going to die. She was flying to God's hands. Everything was just. Everything was just.

Mere seconds now.

Mere… moments.

She closes her eyes.

* * *

White.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Act 1, done and dusted. So, what do you think? Was it good, bad?**

 **The primary reason why I started fanfiction was so that my writing could improve. I'd like to hear input from you guys. Reviews would be much appreciated so as to improve. Thanks. Expect Act 2 to be much more light-hearted and action-packed than this one. The plot continues...**


	21. Ecstasy and Lament

**Act II – Change of Plans**

Dream-like. There was no other way to describe the feeling. Your form drifting flaccidly on the precipice of mist and cloud, loose strings of hair swaying calmly in the evening breeze, the sun's dull gaze settling vigilantly on your tingling skin. Ahh… he couldn't make a better comparison.

And then your most beloved bestest friendsiest comes along and ruins it all. Hiccup forgot to mention the friend's obligational intervention. Hence the term 'dream-like' – he had been propelled out of it like a missile is to the slinging might of a trebuchet. Well, on the offset that he was not killed in the first place with the first push, that is. Such is the life of a chief.

It was also worth noting that Toothy did it with, so far, the best iteration of how hard **Thor** would _probably_ clout him on the gods-damned shoulder. _Always the brunt of his expense…_

 _OW!_ he cries as he slams onto the rocky ground. The boy was simply standing peacefully on a cliff near his newly renovated house: a building which towers above all of Berk so that he could look over anything that needs fixing among his people. But Toothless, ever the scoundrel he is, ruins it all.

Can he _not_ have some respite? He had just finished striking up deals with the Chiefs before they departed to their own Isles, after all.

The victim looks up soon enough past recovery, and the scowl splayed on his face protracted once he saw the look on that damned dragon's eyes.

Absolute, unadulterated joy. He curls his fist.

Now that he thinks about it as he tries to get his bearings from the cliff surface, Toothless _does_ draw some similarities from the god of thunder – uncannily, for the most part. Natural affinity with lightning for some gods-awful reason, his chimp-like attitude – nasty bunch of primates they are, by the way. And the smell. His gods – the smell!

Funny how the most repulsive and socially-crippled of individuals end up being the ones who write their own stories...

Hiccup simply hopes the paint on the mask that kept this illusion of grandeur and solidity alive wasn't about to crumble soon. Nobody wanted to admit it, but he was a symbol, an ideal, an icon. An image of what's to come in a newly revised world of unity and cooperation among different species.

He couldn't let his fellow Vikings down, look at him as a human being like the rest of them. He couldn't stain the portrait he painted for himself.

He was Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, gods-damnit, one of the many sons in a long-respected line of prodigious rulers and chieftains.

Stoick hid his face perfectly well, after all.

Ah well. Simply put, he was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

This recent interference did not help him with things at _all_.

Hiccup growls. Living proof karma doesn't exist, Toothless is, with the no-consequences-for-his-actions gig he manages to keep open all the damn time. And yet, even after having all of those traits and loving, GASP, unmentionables, he is still the same lovable bastard he met eight years ago all the same.

Just… with more intellect than before. Intelligent. Huh. In-tell-li-gent. Is that some sort of made up word to describe him? Doubt it.

* * *

To be honest, Hiccup's reaction to being thrown out of his dreamland didn't come as much of a shock to Toothless.

He has a knuckle-deep thumb in every damned pie in Berk, be it politically or otherwise.

Toothless, though reluctant as he is to admit in front of him, was _severely_ outclassed in that department. All he ever does is settle disputes or approve (perform) tasks for his kin any self-serving Viking would normally do in a heartbeat – without, oh Gods, _authorisation_!

Just because he was Alpha doesn't mean every dragon had to bend over and kiss the very ground he walks on, and that includes having him decide the everyday lives of his fellow kin as if they were _assets_.

No wonder humans are on top of the food chain societally – they never had the obligation to evolve past this alpha/beta relationship bullshit. He always felt unclean after settling such corrupting affairs… kin treating him as if his rule was final and everything else they had planned thrown into the bin entirely.

Though, he had to admit, it did feed into his ego and bring him to a calming mood… yes, quite a bit, indeed.

Yet, there are always drawbacks, this situation in particular being one of the many. He so wished he didn't have to deal with mind-shattering revelations constantly. All the more reason he should probably kidnap Hiccup and fly off on their own, really. Stupid Astrid and her knot around Hiccup's heart.

Toothless gives the boy-chief a quick look-over.

Darker complexion, ganglier muscles, deeper facial features of all things. Hiccup has grown into his own over the last decade: morphing a sizable replacement who filled in his father's legacy perfectly.

Over time, his voice became more defined, more developed, confident; only two years had passed before it shaped into one which rivals that of his old man's – one that commanded tenor and wisdom beyond his years.

His mum was of great help, of course; that much was true after Stoick's council went up in flames – but it was the sheer _absurdity_ of the problems Hiccup had found himself in which shaped him into what he was today. A lot about him changed in his misadventures – him micromanaging his merry band of misfits gave him the qualities he should've gotten when he was a pre-pubescent. Self-esteem, confidence, responsibility, leadership, camaraderie, so on and so forth.

...

Point being, he wouldn't have gotten anywhere near as far without Toothless' capture. And yet he still treats him with two times less the respect that he so rightfully deserves!

And now he's here, filling in his shoes, figuring out how to get out of this baffling clutter.

Sigh.

Well, there was _one_ consolation. All but one quality of the boy was not fondled with by the whirlwind that was his evolving life. Oh yes. In fact, he expresses such qualities quite vehemently whenever he gets, particularly when in the presence of those closest to him. Toothless, Valka, Astrid, hell, even Fishlegs from time to time. Whinging. He whinged when he was five during which he couldn't lift _this, stupid, ax_! He whinged when he was ten during which he didn't get to train with the rest of his age group. He whinged when he was fifteen during which he thought he lost the captured Night Fury in the Berkian Forest. See where the dragon was going here?

Hiccup was _full_ of it. He was also half-tempted to tell him the goatee he was growing should be scrapped entirely, but he didn't have the heart.

Any chief worth his salt would do well for themselves to take their daily dose of self-loathing and pity, lest they eventually succumb to staying-in-bed-longer-than-usual syndrome.

That statement may or may not extend to every other Berkian around here.

Just that Hiccup actually has an excuse.

Toothless motions for the boy to follow his tail, to which he has no choice but to accept… or else. He chuckles. How exhilarating it was for him to have Hiccup tied on his meddling little claws on a daily basis.

Normally, he wouldn't act this bossy to anyone, especially Hiccup. But… he was dealing with an anomaly here… a really, earth-shattering anomaly. Never in his twenty-two years of life did he ever encounter a species – a Fury, no less – being able to honest-to-gods _talk_. The implications of meeting with one could be a game-changer.

Once he leads Hiccup back inside his house, he quickly dips his writing claw into the nearest ink-spill and parchment, writing out with clear urgency.

 _Hiiiccuup, she can taaalllk. I can't even understand what she is saying… What in the four realms do I do?_

Hiccup could only ever help to be snark about it. He fixed him with a terribly smug level grin. "Oh, I don't know bud. Usually you just shoot saliva onto the wall until it sticks when it comes to these things; you tell me."

Toothless unsheathes his claws a bit. _Why, you snide…_ He pauses. A revelation slowly dawns... a frown on his face forms. _…is this… how I always write?_

A nonchalant shrug. "Pretty much."

The dragon's ears droop. _Oh._

"Yeah, and now you know how it feels. I could have also berated you on how if you wanted the 'problem' to be kept discrete you could have flown to Gothi's stone hut instead of my inflammable house, but I don't feel that evil today. And… I think there's a typo right there on the first bit?"

 _Where?_

"Right here. 'Talk.'"

 _Oh, heh, funny thing that._ One of his paws reaches for a spot… wherever on his body. _It's not._

"Haha! And you claim to be an adept at literac—I am sorry, what?"

 _Nope. Not a typo. Please don't explode into a flaming ball of ecstasy while you digest it._

Hiccup stood back to do a double take. "You are shitting me."

 _Nope again. And pleasepleasepleasepleasePLEASE, leave your excitement until after the fact._

"…"

 _..._

"Oh. My. GODS!"

Toothless really had to push against the urge not to hit himself in the head thrice over. _I don't know what I expected._

* * *

No way.

No friggin' way. A dragon that can talk?

Coherently?! A Fury, of all families; in his bloody house, of all places?

This was unexpected, scratch that, unprecedented! He was almost tempted to jump there and then but his recent role in stepping up to chiefhood slightly softened that blow. After all, only a bit lip was keeping him from such lust for adventure. His feet twitch and his eyes goggle. The slightest hint of blood drew.

His inner-scholar was squealing like a mad Meatlug when her daily boulder intake becomes larger than usual. ' _O_ _h gods, oh gods, oh—'_

 _Almost_ out of the blue, Toothless' ear flap smack him on the head quite scoldingly. _Hiccup. Focus._

He snaps out of it. "Oh, oh. Right. Focusing. Channelling my inner calm."

 _…_

"…"

 _Done yet?_

"Done."

 _Finally! Now, let me give you the laydown. So, she's conscious and was last lying on the floor looking mighty down, so you_ should _be fine in the safety department… Hopefully, she noticed the red bag she washed ashore with was waiting there on the nightstand. Possessiveness is in our kind's genes; I should know. Probably nabbed it off a sailor or something. Dunno._ Might _be shocked at meeting a human at first, probably thrash the place in the process… but you can calm her down with that draconic charm of yours eventually, right?_

"I don't know, Toothless. My sample size on how to properly greet other Furies is pretty slim here. And did you just say…?"

Toothless raises his right paw reassuringly. Trust _me when I say she isn't like any other dragon I have met._ He chuckles bitterly. _She looked like the most passive thing to have ever been cast ashore in the entirety of the Archipelago. A baby could inflict more damage than her._

"Are you _also_ gonna leave out the part where you had a mild panic attack and darted outside specifically to ask for my help, or…?"

…

 _We don't_ talk _about that._

Hiccup groans, soon a brief stint of a smile forming on his lips. "Alright, fine, fine. I will do it. I am not happy about it, though. She tries anything remotely involving fire and it's on your head. You better repay with a tankard of uncut Hooligan Ale."

 _…_

 _Will do._


	22. In the Dark

_Rays of sun falling through cracks of a window. Cooling breeze, smells of dew. Paws on ground, hind legs spread backwards, chest straight up, wings drawn back… feels wooden; fine texture almost. Noise; laughter, banter, warming. All welcome. All nice. Yes, feels lovely._

 _Anna's eyes crack alight. Room looks almost ancient, a relic of a past long gone. Looked better for wear… better than it has ever been. It clicks at the back of her mind. It was their cottage. Before Dad was taken._

 _She tries to move. Fails. Tries again. Fails once more._

 _Almost like she's dislocated from the environment. Like a spectator. But she looks down – it was her, in the flesh – she can taste it. Taken aback when her eyes move on their own. Settling, a rising figure from… it looks like a chair. Less pale. Healthier. Alive and well. Could it be…?_

 _"I have to admit, I am much rather liking this arrangement, girls – dare I say it."_

 _Yes. He was Dad. Inside a building worthy of being called a cottage._

 _Unlike now, anyways._

 _The scene shifts, filling in the colours absent before. Almost as if a spark ignited within her. Didn't matter; had to focus. Again, her body moves on its own, this time her mouth._

 _She apparently scoffs at Dad's previous statement, the manner in which she voiced her displeasure sending Gal rolling on the floor. Bouts of what… she could only guess. Somewhere between hilarity and actual remorse._

 _Guess who it was for._

 _Memories flood, a tsunami of love and sound._

 _How they loved catching up with him. That's it… she remembers now._

* * *

 _Dad had just finished work in the mines and came back in pitch-black. Same goes for last week when they were celebrating Anna's thirteenth birthday, same goes for today. Galina just finished her performance. Violin. Very harsh piece, B section in particular. Bar 16, chord. D minor. Yikes. 21, long ass phrase, double notes, lasts 6 bars. Jeez. Not good. Not that she was not up for the task or it was impossible by any means; sailed through it with flying colours._

 _Took some mighty coaxing from Galina, but Dad managed (was forced) to wash up before the piece._

That river was damned COLD _, Dad quips just after._

 _Her lips quirk slightly. "Well, to be fair Dad, working at the coal mine your whole life would set quite the low bar when it comes to standards. No need to say dare. Though, that's saying if you guys really had any in the first place."_

 _"I am sure if you hadn't lost my application form to the orchestra, this conversation would have gone a lot more… differently," he bites._

 _She actually seemed to recoil at that, her back slamming against the cottage walls. A reassuring smile from Dad was all it took for her to go back to her usual self. She chuckles flippantly. "YEE-ouch. God. Low blow, dad. Low blow."_

 _"Hey," he clasps his hands together before he extended them to envelop both of the girls, "I live to please. And you both are my number one customers."_

* * *

Two years had passed since that conversation ended. Anna knew Dad didn't mean anything from that quip… that jerk at her shoulder. But…

An eye flutters open. She twitches her feet, her claws… all of them as aching as a bruised face after a sickening blow.

They trace the lines of a… wooden ceiling, of all things.

Then she feels it. One of her paws moves to confirm it.

…

Damn.

Anna had never been so successfully thrown off a cliff at such a small feeling before. She'd even make a flustered Peter the apostle being questioned by other Jesuits blush.

Her right eye was gone. It was well and truly gone.

For all intents and purposes and the love of all things holy, she should _really_ drop the semantics right there and then and divert all her attention to the much, much more alarming problem that is current hour… but she simply… she simply can't help herself. Her right eye was _really_ gone.

She knew her body would get nipped off of somebody part at some stage or another; being that of the nature of the occupation she enmeshed herself with.

But… never in her fifteen years of life did she ever think one of her eyes would depart her socket in such a manner.

She shifts uncomfortably on the wooden floor, scoffing at the prospect that she may have been conscious for the whole ordeal. Or… maybe it was so traumatising that her mind shut the memory off as a coping mechanism; either way, both situations were too ghastly for her to even think about.

Her claws trace the coarse outline of the eyepatch, still not quite accepting the whole situation. In hindsight, her survival was expected. One would be hard pressed to find anything blunt that could rip her scales and actually break her bones… who's to say she wouldn't survive the elements as well? By rights, she should have thought that over before pulling the deed. But she… she simply couldn't give a rat's arse about her predicament, about anything anymore.

Her life may as well be over. Gal was gone. Dad was ripped from her arms. All that was left of them… ashes. One, she made herself – the other, an agent of God. The agent claimed to have been looking over them all this time. He claimed he had witness dastardly things. Unholy.

Her being the primary vessel.

The fisherman said he couldn't kill her for he was but a humble man. A humble man who could never have possibly hurt the demon even if he tried. So, he killed himself. A soul for a soul, for hers to be banished back to hell, for his to go to heaven and live in eternal paradise.

Alas was the mystery to that of faith.

Everything happens for a reason. Even Galina's and Daddy's deaths.

God looks over all of us. God loves everyone indiscriminately. God will take away your loved ones because He loves us. It is part of God's grand plan. God thinks of the bigger picture. Us mortals cannot comprehend. Cannot ever comprehend. All the lives He didn't spare were taken for a reason. God was right. God was just.

So, let them come. Let her recently discovered brethren tear her gullets from the inside out – starting from the legs, then to her heart, then to her eye. Plucked out like how a vulture would. That was all she was good for, anyway. Her eye wanders. It stops. Something catches its attention.

A red bag, sitting humourlessly on the nightstand next to the bed. She stumbles for it. She could barely move without wincing due to some form of injury varying from cuts to outright mutilation. Needless to say, everything hurts like a _bitch_.

For some reason or another, she was given it freely to her from her captors. Not that she was ungrateful for it...

Her claws tear its roof.

In it, every piece, every item she would bring to her grave, laid out for her in all of their soggy glory. Galina's violin and sheet music, the gun she brought along from their previous raids, her packet of cigarettes. All of that and more.

They didn't even bother to take it from her. Then again, she hasn't seen other dragons before, so who was she to comment on their culture.

Speaking of which, that still doesn't explain the room.

Setting the bag aside, she takes in the environment one last time. The sun searing through the window kept her company for far too long.

Curiously, the place looked rather tidy for a death cell. Carvings run through the edges of the ceiling, wooden – tribal, almost.

To her left sat the bed she was apparently placed on. Rather crude at first glance. The entire thing was made of wools of varying quality, barely polished leather binding it together. Gone were the designer touches that stained every mattress in Dudinka. This bed painted this society as if it had been sent back to square one.

About the place were trinkets of all kinds resting on varying mantle pieces. One had some totems, the other… trophies…?

She blinks twice. No prison cell would ever have such… personal touches. No species other than primates even retained opposable thumbs. Sure, she can draw and write given enough time – but carvings, such a meticulous, painfully slow process… she wasn't sure how this apparent dragon society even possessed the capacity.

…

Wait…

If this place had _those_ , then, then maybe this wasn't a cell at all. Could she… have been discovered by a society past the Bel—

The door behind her swings open.

* * *

The first thing that graces Hiccup's and Toothless sights was the white dragon… soaring at their presence in sudden terror?

Hiccup retracts an open arm, startled himself. The latter was particularly confused. Be that as it may of the dormant state the Fury was in, no dragon would ever mistake the footsteps of an approaching figure as being nothing of concern.

Dragons were wild creatures at heart. Their genes had been coded – hard lined, more like – to anticipate their deaths potentially impending at any second – at any time.

To not notice something this obvious was distinctly…

Human. Even Hiccup was dumbfounded on that part.

A Fury such as himself would notice things stirring from miles away thanks to his superior hearing. So why was she so different?

Their reactions look like they certainly struck a chord with the dragon. She seized her breath.

Her salty scent stumbles back a little bit as her eye widens to its full length – looking more surprised than startled, to be quite honest. Toothless figures it was probably at the sight of the human-dragon concordant. But… you'd think she'd be more openly hostile, not… recoiling back with a strangled, barely contained whimper.

Save for the wood moaning below her weight, silence ringed true. The dragon's paw lifts from the ground, shying away from them and then back again. Her ears point downwards, her one eye debating on whether or not it should even acknowledge or pay heed to the duo's presence.

Her actions then started becoming more and more human by the second.

She was holding her breath. Her shoulder ridges were held, hoisted, tense… paws were shaking, afraid, terrified... not necessarily at them, however. The tell-tale signs of a defendable stance among dragons were lost on this one.

Instead... it looked as if she was _ashamed_ , of all things.

But all such mannerisms, such human weaknesses all came screeching to a halt.

She did the unthinkable. Her Adam's apple shudders.

Freeing an abated breath and her claws unclenching from the ground, she slowly, slowly moved her head to the side. Her expressions calm, a heartbeat only Toothless could hear slowing. And, with tension exerted from her body and all releasing, submits.

Toothless couldn't believe his eyes. The dragon… acquiesced. Like a beta is to an alpha, even if by right she should be the one standing right beside him.

But while Toothless was inertly remarking about how un-dragon-like the dragon acted, Hiccup took from her actions that he should elicit a different response altogether. All of what Toothless remarked on was irrelevant to Hiccup, being the kind of leader that he is.

What the chief saw in front of him… it didn't seem as if this was a dragon at all. This was… this was a mirror. And all he could see staring back, shattered and broken inside… was himself. Battered, broken. A shell of her being. Her eye closes.

Receiving this end of the stick for fifteen years did it for him. The boy understood.

The Fury looked so fragile, looked so vulnerable… A halo of orange sunlight ignites her head, the rest of her body shrouded in the dark. She brings herself under the window, not caring to utter a sound.

Then he reached out his hand. Honest to gods, reached out his hand. This was a bad idea. The dragon feels it in the air, sensed it; her breathing hitches slightly. _What was he doing, pulling the wool over my eye?_ the dragon openly expressed back. Her back pushes against the wall.

But Hiccup, ever defiant, urged his five digits closer.

All of his fingers, splayed up for all the world to see. At any moment, the dragon could bite those fleshy bits off, gash at him until he was nothing but bloody ashes in the foul wind. But she didn't. She couldn't.

Her nose twitches, eyelids opening slightly. She sees them now. Both of them, looking down on her. The hand closes the distance between them. "Hey, hey…" Hiccup soothes.

Moments pass. Despairing frost wracks the room.

His hand, mere inches from her head now. Toothless didn't even know whether she'd understand the gesture. But her actions proved otherwise.

Or rather, proved to him something else entirely. Indeed, her head soon strokes the palm of his hand, leaning in. She closes her eye. She hungers for more.

Her scales move up and down against his hand… his soft, loving hand.

Affection. Care. She needed more. She wanted more. She had been so deprived…

Her head pushes further. She needs more than a hand.

The dragon thrusts deeper. More room. More space.

Then deeper into Hiccup's form. Then deeper. And deeper. And deeper. Until finally, her head reaches his shoulders. It leans. More support, she begged, more support.

Desperate.

Hiccup complies.

Her head nudges into the crook of his shoulder blades.

The first of the stutters came. Her throat shivers. One of her paws wraps around. It settles on his back. Her claws don't sheathe, no. But she pulls him further still, smothering his form onto her head. Hiccup's hand loosens, soothing the pain and agony on her back.

That's it. She couldn't hold it in any longer. Their care and worry had sent her over the edge.

Like a banshee crying out in the night, she wails. She lets it all out.

Sobs tear through the house. Her tears came in the force of a waterfall. A steady gush of sadness and anger and shame. "Oh, you poor thing…"

All of her vulnerabilities, she laid them out for them. A locked chest, bursting forth without a key to its name. An exposed deck of cards. They could see through them. But they didn't care for that. No. They didn't care whether she was a dragon or human or whatever not. All they see is a person in need of someone to hold her. All that matters was another living soul crying out in pain in front of them.

…

And all they cared for now, all of their dedication…

To mend her broken, shattered heart.

* * *

Anna gets some much-needed love... hope you enjoyed thoroughly my _completely_ emotionless writing.


	23. The Barest Traces

Miles away from the humble isle, through the wailings of the ocean breeze, through the storms that raged on the aquatic plane, through the burning radiance of the glorious ocean sunlight…

A slitted, sapphire eye unfastens.

Her snout sniffs the air, searching, searching...

The trailing of a scent… a scent that had wisped through their habitat not too long ago… too swift, too wounded.

Was she being delusional? A manner through which to cope with the pain that she caused herself all these years? Her mate had indeed taken stock on the idea. He closes the distance between them on their snowy dwelling, nuzzling her in solace. _Live and let live, love. What's done is done. Nothing can bring her back. Let go._

She knew the chances of the scent belonging to her was the odds of finding a pin in a haystack… but…

Can an old, withered mother like her not have the luxury of hoping?


	24. Worst Laid Plans

**We broke 5,000 views! Thanks for the support so far… this fic probably wouldn't have gotten far without it. Special thanks to toothlessgolfer and Blackberry Avar for leaving consistent constructive criticism in their reviews. Check out their fics if you haven't already; it dwarfs the word count and plot cohesion of mine.**

 **Now, on with the show.**

* * *

It was only when the first dribbles of sunlight came through his bedroom window did the white Fury finally succumb to the organic bane that was a good… morning's sleep. Given how human she acted earlier, Toothless really wouldn't put it past her that she'd mumble incoherently a bouquet of flowery apologies in her native tongue when she comes to.

Oh yes, Hiccy and Toothless managed to land a front-row seat booking to her emotionally-charged (and subsequently muddled) mutterings.

Boy, did the dragon most thoroughly enjoy not being in the loop of things, even if she was speaking in another language entirely. He held not a clue what she said, but she did repeat the word 'galina' a hell lot more times in that gibberish of consonants she called a 'language'. Maybe Hiccup would know, being the kind of lunatic to know these things. Maybe, the term had some sort of significance? Doesn't matter, anyway. He was still grumpy and made sure to tell Hiccup about it every time he got the chance.

Now that the sun was out, though, he should probably go and fill Stormfly in about being his replacement Alpha for a little while longer, gods know she craves for it.

Soon as he took the first steps out of Hiccup's living room, he snickers. _What I would give to be Hiccup right now…_

* * *

Said Berkian chief was currently changing his shirt. Gods know for how long that damned thing he called an article of clothing would need to be scrubbed and washed. Now, he's _personally_ never felt a Fury's tears before – partly because of Toothless' insecure _insistence_ that it was a weakness to shed as such – but he was silently glad that the dragon never did.

His gods—was it SLIMY.

Sigh. He slips on a simple tee for the simple occasion. Green and mean. Nice.

His eyes land once more where the dragon had taken up residence. Curled up like a cat in the corner.

Hmmph.

At least she showed some sort of modesty, unlike a certain reptile…

True, he was ecstatic at first (the prospect of talking dragons was a _fucking_ wet dream in of itself), but as they always say… the lustre has faded between them. If he was honest with himself, maybe it was because she sobbed on his incredibly drenched shoulder for seventy, GODSDAMNED, MINUTES!

…

Hiccup clears his throat. If he needed proof that he can be an insensitive asshole sometimes he had just served himself the answer on a copper platter. Damn it. He hates it when that nut Toothless the overweight and politically incorrect dragon was right. As if he needed _more_ proof he wasn't doing good enough.

But hey. He was only Haddock.

Well, now that all was said and done, all they had to do now, was, wait…

Until either Astrid gets up from the living room couch to nag him all day about the desecration of Hiccup's desk parchments – which he totally predicted coming, by the way – or the dragon miraculously having somehow replenished her water ducts and cries him a river again.

Speaking of which, where's that clean water when he needs it? Did Toothless go to fetch it for him?

. . .

Why didn't he bother to try that hip new drug opium that everyone seems to rave on these days? He needed to be hip too. Though now he was doing it for his own sanity, not for recreation or whatever it's called. High?

Still, whatever the case, it invaluably adds another layer of mysterios on top of the dragon's growing at an exponential rate list of whatinthefuckisactuallygoingon.

But she didn't need to know that.

Alright, look. Mom may have told him that he didn't have to be a know-it-all and in no way was he expected to carry the burden of knowing all the goings-on of the world around him. _It's okay,_ the muller said, _don't strain yourself too much. You have friends to lean back on and take the pressure off._

He was going to take that advice to heart too, but that came from his mother so naturally, her answers were taken with some _generous_ pinches of salt. To say the least. Call him paranoid and a bit anti-parentist, but it all boils down to whether she was sane or not and he can happily tell anyone that she's neither of them.

She was an entity so chaotic she earned the right – long ago – to a new description of crazy entirely. You know, like… bonkers. Yeah, great working title. The boy can work with that. Pretty sure her madness stemmed just before Cloudjumper winged her away. That would explain a lot of things.

A lot.

Still, he had some burning questions that he needed answering soon or else _he'd_ go 'bonkers'. Who is the dragon? What is her given name? Where does she hail from? Was she from a separatist splinter nest of dragons? Any danger they posed now that they can probably track her down to Berk?

All of those and more, in one neat, bow-tied package.

Anyway, getting ahead of himself.

Normally, _tangents_ like these go on for so long so as to channel his inner calm; hence the word 'channel'.

Yeah; so what he was ranting all of this in his mind as a coping mechanism? It doesn't matter now.

The dragon's innate mutterings have revealed to him a lot of particular things that, when in the heads of literally anyone else except for his mom, wouldn't even make them break a sweat.

Primarily,

 ** _how in the actual shitting frick did she talk in a language that_** **he _can understand?_**

Specifically, a language he had learnt from a book!

A very foreign-looking merchant sold him the language book months ago… and as far as he can tell, she expressed every single grammatical rule the language required of her flawlessly, almost as if she was native to that merchant's clan. Amidst the sobs, that is. And he can comprehend the language too, Hel, he _needed_ to so that he could communicate with that particular branch of traders.

Catching up with new languages is easy when you are a bit of a linguist yourself. Having all the time in the world helps too. Although his tongue was kind of broken, he was satisfied enough.

…

A little. If only his mom was more supportive of his tendencies to read two hours before he sleeps… obviously, her statement about his attitude being harmful was a load of crock. His eyesight is getting a bit blurry, though…

 _SLAM!_ the door juts across where he was still standing in his little living room. The air wafts at his hair. Standing with a sheathed staff and a naked face was a rather pout looking woman, one of her hands leaning on her hips and the other… pinching a wriggling Toothless by the ear?

 ** _WRAAAGHLLLLL_** , the dragon moans, struggling to get her off.

"Mooom?" the boy starts, crossing his arms. "Is there a reason why you are putting Toothless through highly excruciating agony?"

What Hiccup didn't expect, amidst Toothless nodding all puppy-like at Valka, was to hit him with another question of her own.

"Is there something you aren't telling me about, Hiccup? All I kept hearing outside your house was this ear-splitting camaraderie between you boys about not telling the village something… the 'problem', you called it."

His heart drops, smacking face first onto the ground. Toothless splays an accusatory glare at him. "Uh… t-there has to be some sort of misunderstanding—"

"Oh, don't play coy with your mother, Hiccup. I know what Toothless looks like when he's hiding something from me. Add to the fact he was walking out trying to avoid me, mind you," she pulls even harder, Toothless yelping in surprise, "and it was obvious that something is up. So, Hiccup. Mind telling me all about this… problem?"

"How is that a valid reason… what—"

"But _what._ "

He slaps himself in the face, leaving his hand there as an agonising memento. "Oh boy, I was _asking_ for that."

"Mm-hmm," she chortles. "Now, since I have got your pet salamander as hostage, I am giving you to the count of ten. By the time I am done counting I will start to tickle him in the belly so hard he will be crying for the sweet release of death. But hey," she raises her free hand up wide, "by all means, take your time. T'was high time he atoned for his baking sins, anyhow."

If anybody with half a brain were there they would tell you it was quite obvious he was oblivious to what 'baking sin' Valka was referring to, but it certainly seemed to strike a chord with the dragon. In fact, Toothless suddenly thought begging and whining with two paws smudged together was a very good idea of showing just how _sorry_ he was. _Now_ comes the puppy eyes.

…

"Fascinating spot on the ceiling, yes?" Valka interrupts, hurling him out of his whirling mindscape. Hiccup looks at her blankly. "The texture does look rather intriguing. Lines, more lines. Oh, look! A big one! And then there's more lines, and more; gods, this is so much fun!"

Wow, Hiccup barely noticed it but Toothless was starting to look as skittish as him, too. At least he knew where he got his sarcasm from…

Ignoring the fact that Hiccup somehow lets his mother sass him till her heart's content, he was internally anxious, incredibly so, about revealing… the 'problem' to her. Having to explain what may as well be life-altering news to a woman who obviously cannot keep a level head and cannot keep her trap mouth **shut.**

And soon there will be a vote of no confidence taking place with her name on it. Reason one: insanity.

Heh. Look who is talking.

Damn… he didn't really have a way out, did he?

Damn if he did, damn if he didn't. How does she corner him so well?

So, or so he justifies to himself in his gutter of a mind, he ends up saying the only other thing a coward like him could.

"You think you can fare this one for me, Toothless? I will give you a thousand hugs. Pretty please?"

Relying on your friends.

…

It didn't go over well.

 **Grrr…**

"Okay, okay!" he throws his hands up. "Fine. Sorry, bud. Just, just don't laugh, Mom."

The chieftain breathes a sigh worthy of the gods' attention. "Hooooo boy. Okay, Hiccup. You are a twenty-two-year-old super demon. With looks that kill and muscles that make women _swoon_. _You_ can talk to your bloody mother about this—"

"You know I can hear you, right?"

"Aaannnd _there_ it is. That's not the point, Mom!" That got a hearty laugh out of that conniving… little… woman! Damn her. "Okay, okay. Wew. Deep. Breaths."

He breaaattthheeess.

"Alright," he blurts. Valka tilts her head, humoured. "So, so…" He scratches the back of his incredibly irritated scalp. "So! There, there is a dragon, right… in my newly… renovated… moved into… and furnished room – yes, there is a dragon in there, who can," his hands toss side to side, "speak! Now, according to this guy here, in a language _other_ than Norse. Who would have thought? Oh, and wait until you see for yourself the species she belongs to. I could open a petting zoo right there and then. Make a profit to last a lifetime."

"You will also have enough testicular pain to last a lifetime soon enough."

"OKAY, OKAY!" he cries, trembling back a few paces. "Clearly, her speaking will be enough to warrant and be a cause for celebration, yes? But that is not all. See, the dragon _also_ speaks in a language that is foreign; that should come as no surprise, and... and as a given. BUT! But… she communicates," he points to both himself and his mom, "in a language _we_ , can understand. DidthatgooverwellIhopeitdid. Anyway. Yeah. That's about it. It's Russian. She speaks… in Russian."

Now they both, yes, even the dragon, glare at him with varying degrees of shock. Guess who is most shocked.

Meanwhile, Valka was the one that claps her hands together maniacally. "Haha! You should have seen your face. Yes, Hiccup. I do believe. See how happy we all are now that we cooperate with _other_ people? See how happy _you_ are now that you **communicated** and **cooperated**? I know it's a tough concept to grasp, but…" she says, finally letting go of Toothless' ear to which a paw almost immediately springs up to take in Valka's place, "we are here for you, Hiccup. The whole of Berk, is here for you. You don't have to go it alone."

He inwardly groans.

Oh, so that entire conversation was just one of her insane lessons then? Balder on a stick. See what he means by labelling her crazy? She justifies his decision constantly. "Look, mom, it's not that…"

A flat hand comes up in protest. "Then by all means, _do_ rebuke."

"I…" he mutters, before regretting his remark as quick as it came, knowing full well he just lost his right to argue. "Don't have one. You know what? Fine. I will humour you for a little bit. Fine. I will use 'we', then. And we…"

He finally lit up a face worthy of being so-called respectable. Hiccup leans his head nearer to them, determined. Valka grins, beaming with pride.

His hands come together, loping each other in confidence. "We need a plan."


	25. Eyes to Eye

"Interesting plan you have got cooking there, Hiccup."

The boy groans almost immediately at her snide remark. His good foot suddenly thought repeatedly beating the floor into submission was a very good recreational activity. He raises his hand reassuringly, a leer spreading across pathetic excuse for lips. "Mom. Stop. It will be fine. You are worrying too much."

"Oh, look who the boy's calling worried. Remember: I have a cocked and loaded 'I told you so' ready to be deployed at any moment. And I know you are very particular about your fragile ego."

"I _don't_ have a fragile ego."

Valka holds a stare, for a second acknowledging that Toothless the-standing-patiently-by-the-kitchen-window dragon would much rather not be here. He would rather handle his _utmost important, life-or-death situation Alpha business, instead._

…

Gods, it's almost midday already?

"Okay, okay, maybe I do, but only ever in stressful situations. Otherwise, I keep my ever-arousing and precious ego to a minimum. Trust," he attempts to confess.

Valka, meanwhile, doesn't look one bit convinced. At all. The woman leans in, taking in what's left of the chieftain's exponentially lessening personal space right now. "First of all, Hiccup, how does it feel to be so thoroughly full of shit?"

He could only ever smile at his mother's wholesome parenting skills. "Absolutely great. You should try it yourself sometime."

That, got a laugh out of her – so much so she hauls her block head back, much to the relief of Hiccup.

"Heh. I can see that," she deceits. "However… second of all, and perhaps most importantly… I don't necessarily see eye-to-eye with how your plan is boiling."

He rolls his eyes. "And everybody wonders why I prefer to work alone…"

"It's not—okay, Hiccup, plot-planner and stick-up-your-ass extraordinaire, how would you justify walking in—and get this – using Russian to communicate with her?" she asks. "She's obviously going to turn berserk before you can even get to the fifth syllable. Need I remind you that your newly renovated… moved into… and refurbished house, is at stake?"

Hiccup really had to fight the urge to site a palm on his already pink forehead. "Mom…"

"Oh, right!" she clicks, recounting reality in a purposefully strained pitch. "She's docile. I keep imagining this badass hunk of flesh which can tear you apart in a moment's notice, but no, you get this overgrown lizard-puppy instead. Not much different than all other dragons, really."

"You are doing this on purpose, aren't you?"

She cackles maniacally, a laugh that got under Hiccup's skin. "Oh, well. A woman's gotta have fun one way or another. It's made all the better when it's at the expense of one of your own…"

"Why did I even bother trying to drag _you_ back to Berk?"

"Because you loved my charm and good looks, obviously. Whatever else?" She flicks a few hair strands back.

Bewilderment and two bits of dread almost surmounts his outward expressions. "Uhh… no, mom; we are not going into that territory."

The mad woman had the audacity to expose her neck plainly at him as well. "Bite me. Now, as I was saying…" She strolls over to near where Hiccup was sitting on the kitchen chair, hopping her butt onto the dining table with a mere snort in her mannerisms. "Let's just theoretically assume your plan fails – spectacularly, I hope – for a second. Do we just… high-tail it out of there? Or... do we fight back and risk her not trusting us?"

"I am sure it won't come to that."

"Oh. Really, now? Dragons are nothing if not erratic. We need to have a backup plan in case things go awry… hide weapons behind our backs as a means…"

"See, mom. You don't get it. We _have_ to get her to trust us first. We need to appear trustworthy, especially to dragons which by nature are irrational when it comes to others defending themselves. Burying the hatchet _also_ does not consist of one backstabbing the other individual when they do something they may not realise is wrong. If not, then…" He pauses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Yeah, I guess we high-tail it out of my… newly… refurbished… moved into... room. So, no weapons _or_ fighting back."

She raises an astute eyebrow, a sigh gushing out her lips. "Trust is earned, son – and there's no doubt in my mind that dragon knows. Your trust is dangerously shaping up to be that obligatorily attractable biscuit jar on the kitchen counter. She would be taking it as a sign of weakness."

"Can we discuss the mechanics of what and what not to do when strangers are around later? We have a dragon who's obviously terrified and screwed emotionally in there. She cried on my shoulder for seventy straight minutes, mom! SE-VEN-TY. That's an hour, and like, a sixth! Do Furies even have tear ducts that big?"

His mother scoffs, leaping off her pedestal then wielding her staff. "I AL-SO STRETCH OUT MY PRO-NUN-CI-A-TION WHEN I AM BE-ING A SPOILT LI-TTLE SHIT TOO. Oh, just stop whining about it already. We have a confidential dragon to tame." She twisted her back on him, her son failing to notice the smirk forming on her lips. "You also parroted what I said earlier about our weaponry, by the way."

He groans in exaggeration, rubbing his eyes to tighten his loosening grip on sanity. "Just shut UP."

* * *

The door before the trio rasps open in ragged groans.

Calm and collected would not be the words used to describe Hiccup right now; his palms were starting to wet – jittering the cup of water he carried – and his toes were obtaining minds of their own – wobbling about like worms in his wabbly sandals. Toothless looked on with interest ranging from mild and exceedingly robust – his ego couldn't decide which was which – and Valka… well, let's just say she's not taking it as seriously as she should be.

Guess living with an assortment of dragons for nearly two decades in a bloody _dinge_ would do that to you. _Damn it, mom._

They march to her seemingly in formation, smallest frame to largest – Hiccup volunteered to be the lead, being the closest in relation to the dragon. Toothless the-questionably-consenting dragon insisted he took up the back, though both humans had their doubts on whether or not it was because he couldn't speak or write in Russian.

Perhaps it had to do with her being of a sister species. Oh, she was also a girl – so extra precautions must be taken so as to prevent her feeling sexually assaulted by one virgin little _nutcase._

Soon enough, they find themselves over her pseudo place of residence.

Guilt trickles from Hiccup's mind, simmering on his skin. It grips him by the throat. Gods, he should have treated her better; tucked her onto his bed or _something_ more modest than... this.

Maybe it was the low light. Maybe he was simply tired from the Thing. Perhaps Gothi patched her up so well the wounds didn't show initially. But the sunlight shimmering through never told of such luscious, tall tales.

The Fury was a mess. Riddled on her scales laid bare hundreds of cuts and bruises, some so minuscule it faded into the background, some so immense even the bandages wrapped around her sparkly surface failed to mask them. Now that he thinks about it, Toothless never mentioned her wounds when he got back from that beach. To think this was a common injury… occurrence within his nest that it merely warrants a passing shrug from him was troubling.

Dragon society still had a long way to go.

Maybe this one will put in a new perspective.

Swallowing down his thudding heart, Hiccup knees over her form, a hoisted, gentle hand at the ready. _Moment of truth._ It softly nudges the shoulder blade that wielded… a tattered ribbon of all things—

Like clockwork, her good eyelid spurts upward. Her two pairs of hind legs quickly scramble underneath her form – as fast as any offspring of lightning would, anyway. Sprouting up to face level, she pushes her back against the corner wall, head still lowered and eyes only half-open.

They sigh. At least they ticked one problem off the list. Not dying.

Her expression soon shifts when a cup of water appears before her sight. Two offering hands courtesy of yours truly.

The dragon's mouth salivates with what little… _liquid_ it had left. But in a surprising turn of events, or so Hiccup himself noticed, she restrains herself. From, you know. Being a dragon. _Yeah, it was probably best that she doesn't lunge after the person carrying her only source of hydration._

Instead, she understood the concept of a cup better than any other dragon could.

For the water… to not fucking _spatter_ everywhere… because why else there wouldn't be a _fucking_ cup to hold it in in the first place you dickheads?!

…

Okay, maybe he _was_ still brackish from his past experiences with Toothless.

Memories of him doing like so flash before his eyes. The number of drench shirts, in particular, being the spearheader. _Damn it you fat, lovable, spoilt piece of overgrown reptile._

He shakes his head vigorously. Back to reality, now. His eyes narrow.

Wow.

The manner in which she went about it was also… interesting to say the least. More to Toothless than most. Balancing her figure on two back hind-legs, the white dragon lifts two others to the cup, clutching it shakily from Hiccup's hands. It was bottom's up from then on out, gobbling it down greedily without a drop to waste. Again, so… _human_.

The cup meets the floor gently. She nods once. Curt. An empty smile forms.

Civil. First impressions are important. That much was true for this dragon's morals.

…

Balder on a stick!

Valka became a lot more interested, to say the least. Toothless was quietly losing his mind. Quitting cold turkey, especially around such an interesting subject was… difficult for Hiccup, especially when she deconstructs the very notions of the fabrics of draconic reality itself. But the research side of him will just have to wait. Now would be a great time to act as a dragon-human liaison. 'Would' being the keyword.

He was failing miserably.

The likeliness of his initial plan falling flat on his face was spectacularly high, but he'd much rather not crack under the pressure now that he thinks about it, thanks. His throat bobs.

How on earth will he go about this?

…

 _Oh._

He resists the urge to slap himself in the face once more.

Of _course_ acting sympathetic for one would be a great help.

Hiccup kneels, crouching to face-level with his house guest's battered head. Her one eye dances up in a balled of uncertainty, pupil too hesitant to exchange pleasantries. But, with grand effort on her part, she manages.

A pair of eyes and one meet. Figuring it wouldn't hurt to try, he lifts up a hand and waves. Worth a shot if she truly is capable of comprehending human languages – Russian of all things.

It's also worth a shot if he tries to establish some form of exchange. He had to be careful what he says, now. Shouldn't. Let. Emotions. Take. Control.

His lips part, a tongue licking its top.

That internal bout of encouragement probably wasn't going to work any time soon. He starts.

 _"Hello—"_

 _"Why?"_

He staggers back a bit. Immediately caught off guard with that question, gods-damnit. Calm down. He manages to get something out of her leastways.

They understand each other.

His face contorts – somewhere in a purgatory between gentle and confused to nigh hell.

 _"I am sorry?"_ softly asks Hiccup.

 _"You are going to kill me anyway, aren't you?"_ she directs a claw at him, more stating than accusing him of it. _"For intruding on your territory. For being what I am. So why not save all of this luxury you have bestowed upon me and be done with it? Surely your monarchy greatly disproves of my company…"_

That only worked to confuse him more. _"And why would we ever want to do that?"_

 _"B-… because…"_ Her throat ties a knot. _"Because I am an abomination."_

 _Oof._ Geez. If Toothless was a prideful prick, then she was his antithesis. Dragon treatment seems to extend everywhere, he guesses. Even down south. Just that this one was a bigger version of fifteen-year-old Hiccup, apparently. At least Vikings aren't actively hostile to them any longer. Though reluctant at first, she lets Hiccup embrace the side of her cheek. A loose finger comforts it. _"Look,"_ he mutters to her gently. _"I don't know who – or why – your people would call you that. But know that you are the furthest thing from one that you can possibly be. You are a Fury. You don't deserve to be treated like this."_

 _"So why is there one behind you?"_ Hiccup wisps around, only to find the incredibly confused face of Toothless the idiot-and-condescending dragon. _"You more or less already have one of my species as your slave. So why care? Act as some sort of concerned Gestapo?"_

Now comes out the defensive dragon sympathiser side of him. And by the gods was he _livid_ about being put on the opposite side of the spectrum. _"A slave? I'd sooner **die** than label a dragon as one. They live with us, on this here isle, willingly. On their own terms. I will never be able to live with myself with _anything _less."_

 _"They? So there are more?"_

 _"I… yes. Black dragon at the back of me is their so-called Alpha – though he'd much rather being a lazy bum_ sitting on his ass doing nothing all day. _You yourself can ask him about it later. He can only respond by writing. He also needs a translator. I_ suppose _I am his designated translation machine. Godsyouareabnormallyintelligent."_

Sighing, she lets the last statement slide.

The chieftain scrubs the back of his neck – inner tension leaving soon enough. He didn't regret one bit that he switched back to Norse, even for a little while. Toothless looking infuriated to all Hel was priceless. Best served raw, revenge is. It didn't take much for Valka on her observant part to discern and grin.

He hurls his mind back to the present. An extended shrug.

 _"I… look, we got off on the wrong track and… I got on the defensive,"_ he tries to explain, licking his lips not soon after. _"Years of mingling with other petty, manipulative and power-hungry bastards of chieftains will do that to you. I hate seeing dragons get the short end of the stick, especially this guy back here. He's like a brother to me. Sorry for lashing out. So…" he rests body on one leg, "let's trace back some steps I guess. With names, for starters."_

Hiccup then figures sitting on the floor would make him much more comfortable. Like so.

" _So, well, umm_ … _Mine is…_ Hiccup." Shifting back to Norse for a second was probably the best action taken on that whim. Saying 'hiccup' in Russian will most likely grant him a permanent stink-eye on her part, he knows full well... Yeah, not having a fragile ego his ass. _"What's yours?"_

The dragon suddenly thought the floor was a most interesting sight. Clearly, she wouldn't want her name to fall on death's ears. A short time afterwards, however, her stiff posterior loosens a bit, as if having already decided her next move. _"A… Anastasiya,"_ she finally reveals, shifting on the floor. _"Those I know subsequently call me Anna for short. So conversations don't go for too long."_ Wary of the way the chief's eyes looked curtly at her eye, she sinks her form in trepidation. _"Though I suppose you wouldn't want to call me by that."_

Though that left much room to ponder just how _human_ her name sounded, the resulting feedback was almost immediate. _"We are all friends here. Having no barriers with anyone is kind of my motto at this point. I want to get to know you; Anna the person. Leave the political and PR fallout from your isle to me."_

Appearing a mite stunned herself, this 'Anastasiya' started off a bit doubtful about his impossible declaration; rightfully so. But the expression that sprouted on his face afterwards was all she apparently needed to know that at least he appeared _genuine_. So, she plays along. The dragon nods slowly. _"O… Okay."_

 _"Alright. We got somewhere. That's good. Now for your home isle…"_

 _"Well, funny coincidence – I was just about to ask for yours as well,"_ admits Anna.

 _"Oh?"_

 _"Yeah. I looked around your room earlier. The decorations look… off. Not local at my place."_

 _"Oh yeah, **those**. I get that a lot. Most of them I got from one of my many adventures with…" _he points towards his best friend, who'd rather much not be referred to directly, being the anxiety-wracked reptile he was, _"this guy here. Though such excursions together are few and far between nowadays. Political business takes chief priority. Haha, get it? Chief? OkayIwillstopnow. So… yeah."_

 _"No, no. It's not like… that at all. I don't know how to describe it. Your bed, your furnishings, everything… I don't know. I think… they look a bit home-made. A bit trite? Wait, no, that's not the right word at all. Sorry."_

 _"It's fine. But… what do you mean by home-made?"_ he says, a finger tapping his chin.

 _"Well... your bed doesn't look franchise-made for starters. No brand would ever release this to the market without getting an earful from QA. Unless you want to cop your chances at raising your stocks, that is. Oh, no, but then you will be hit with court fines and bottle-neck cease-and-desist letters so you are asking for a virtual death sentence…"_

Hiccup had trouble keeping up with all of these… seemingly non-existent terms, at least to Berk. So, he asks for clarification. _"Uh… excuse me? Lost teenager here?"_

Anna breaks from her train of thought at his tone of voice. _"Sorry?"_

 _"Bit confused with all of those terms you keep throwing around. I guess your clan is not only different in culture or language."_

 _"Really?"_ she murmurs, more to herself than to anyone else. _"If you don't know what a court is, then…"_

 _"Uhmm…"_

The White Fury sighs, though this time it was more of clarification rather than annoyance. _"Wouldn't you happen to know what a 'factory' is?"_

 _"Uh… not that I know of…? Don't know_ any _of these things."_

 _"Then how do you know Russian? Anybody who knows Russian that doesn't live under a rock knows what one is. . ."_

* * *

 **(gibberish)**

 **(gibberish)**

 **(more gibberish)**

…

…

Toothless formulates an incredulous look, raising a paw pointing at them flatly. _The fuck?_

* * *

Hiccup scratches his scalp. _"Oh, that. Well, that was kind of required of me. One of the traders… their clans down south apparently speak in another language entirely. Nothing like Norse. They also looked battered to all Hel, so… combine all the free time in time in the world, empathy and enough patience on my part and—"_

 _"OUR."_

Human and dragon hurl their heads to the sudden sound, only for their sights to stumble upon a familiar woman. That naturally incites a groan from the human. Man… Of _course_ , his mother decides to intrude in the most inconvenient time possible.

Meanwhile, Valka is still all humpity and bumpity. _"Hello, there. Sorry for the intrusion, but the boy's making a fool of himse—"_

 _"Am not!"_

 _"Yes, you are, son!"_ she cries, portraying upon him a glare. Valka quickly turns back to the task at hand. _"Anyway, nice to meet you. My name is Valka and I am Hiccup's mom—"_

Anna the-so-far-timid dragon couldn't help but splutter in surprise. _"W-what, what kind of name is_ that _?"_

"Ugh…" Hiccup growls, balling a fist. She _really didn't_ need to know that in Russian.

 _"Yeah, I know. Viking thing,"_ replies Valka, still upbeat. _"We mainly name things like they are a spur of the moment thing. Plankton gets stuck on a loose plank on a ship – boom, it's planking now. Your son is a runt? Pff, just slap some human excrement in there and you are done."_

Anna blinks twice. Hiccup meanwhile was fantasising about all the nice ways he could go about murdering Valka in her sleep. _"Wait…_ viking _?"_ the dragon asks.

 _"Yes, darling. Vikings. That's us."_

 _"Oh, my…"_ Her ears flutter open when the gears in her head manage to turn. _"That explains things… many things. Uhh… Hic-cup. You… you mentioned earlier something about traders, right?"_

 _"_ Oh, I am so going to get that vile bi— _Yeah, yeah, I am up, I am up; I am sorry, what? Um, yes, yes. I mentioned them earlier."_

 _"Damn,"_ she curses softly. _"Their spread is wider than I thought. Uhh… if I may ask, Hic-cup…"_

 _"Anything, Anna."_

 _"Right. Uh… Wouldn't you happen to have a map with you? Don't have to get one if it's afar."_

 _"Well, Anna, luckily for you…"_ he brings out something from his seemingly endless supply of compartments. Lo and behold, in the parchment: a map. _"I carry one on my person at all times,"_ he beams pridefully. _"And situations like these just proves how much I need it. Unlike certain some who can't seem to see why."_

Valka snorts. " _True, Hiccup. But don't you think your having-things-under-complete-control fantasy is stretching things a little too far?_ A map on your person at all times a tad bit… excessive?" she says, switching back to Norse at the last minute.

"Mom, stop. Please. For her sanity."

"Oh, fine. You are no fun…"

 _"Anyway… here, Anna."_ He places the map on the ground. She collects it not soon after. _"Just… just don't tear it, please."_

The dragon, now getting bolder and bolder by the second, glares at him with a rebellious sneer. _"So what, you trust me with a breakable_ clay _mug but not with a piece of paper?"_

 _"U-Uh…"_

 _"Hiccup,"_ assists Valka. _"That was a joke. I swear, men are so dense sometimes..."_

That got a giggle out of Anna. _"I almost feel tempted to say 'true'… but that'd be a little rude to those who have me over."_ Oh, so he has **three** girls breathing down his neck now? Gods, this day just keeps getting _better_.

 _"Finally, some dragon who gets it!"_

Anna shakes her head, amused. On her paw, the paper wags nimbly in the air. It looked typical – to her, at least. Various lands that come in a variety of shapes and sizes – with no contour lines, surprisingly. Though, she guesses she didn't know what she expected. Why would Vikings of all people take interest in trivial things like _geology_?

Her eye moves down to the bottom of the coarse parchment.

She couldn't exactly read the legend – but if she had to guess, the splotch of ink acts as an indicator. An indicator for… _Home…_

God-damnit. Anna ruffles herself out of that shithole soon enough.

There will be time to grieve later. Now she had a job and a public figure to keep in check. Doesn't mean that it wasn't hard on her, though…

Her sight lands her on the edges. Bordering the straight line was a bold streak of ink running along its general periphery. Until it curves at the end of the parchment, that is. Hiccup and his dragon-friend really got around. It practically filled out the rest of the empty space.

Though, she couldn't help but wonder…

Ah, to hell with it. It was worth a shot. _"What's this line over here?"_ Anna questions.

The chief leans into her paws to get a better view of what she was pointing at. _"Oh. That._ Aegir's Wall. _That's the snowy barrier that surrounds us, the_ Archipelago _. Far as we know, that's the edge of the world. Feels a tad bit too small, though. Apparently, there's been an opening there… leading to gods know where. But that's part of the fun, isn't it? I am planning recon there soon."_

 _"Hmm…"_ she nods, humming, absolute confidence sprawling about her form. _"Alright. This just confirms it."_

 _"Confirms what?"_

 _"My theory. There's a reason why I find your society strange. Remember what you said about the merchants?"_

 _"Yeah. I think I repeated that about… three times now."_

 _"Two, actually."_ A voice from afar corrects.

Hiccup suddenly looks like a kettle just waiting to rupture. _"Nobody asked for your input, mom! Ugh. I swear… Anyway, as I was saying… yes, they are merchants. Told me they hail from the south-Easterling seas. Also told me they usually keep to themselves, and only branch out when they need to. Good on them, I say!"_

At the back of Anna's mind, something clicks. _"Ah-ha! So_ that's _how they made their excuse. Though, why they didn't bother to at_ least _try to learn your language is simply beyond me."_

His eyes narrow. _"Wait, who's they?"_

She exhales a good chunk of air, claws twitching. " _Hic-cup?_ _I know it's a lot to ask but… how far are you willing to let your rhetoric bullshit meter slide?"_

 _"Well, I don't know, Anna,"_ he admits, shrugging. _"I flung it away a long time ago given the amount of impossible shit that has already happened to me so far. So it's probably, like, at the bottom of the ocean. Pissing off somewhere; don't know."_

She would have wiped off a cumbersome strand of sweat off her forehead if she could. _"Oh, good. This will make things much, much easier then. Next up: will you trust me? A complete stranger?"_

 _"As I said: I treat everyone I meet with a reasonable modicum of trust at first. You have given me no reason to warrant otherwise. Why?"_

 _"Well… that's probably because what I am about to say sounds pretty far-fetched. Scratch that. Very. Incredibly, far-fetched."_

He leans in closer – so does Valka, even.

 _"I…"_ She hesitates a little bit at first – worried that it may well very tear through the fabric of their reality itself. There was simply no other _possible_ explanation to elucidate… any of this. A sigh. She had to get the truth out some day. No use stressing over it now. _"I believe,"_ she starts. _"With reasonable confidence, that the clan you talked about the merchants belonging to doesn't_ exist. _"_

Two sets of blinks. One in disbelief, the other in maniacal excitement. Hiccup, naturally, responds first. _"Wow. You weren't kidding when you say that it sounds pretty far-flung."_

 _"You think that's impressive? It gets better."_ The map still on her paws was swiftly rolled onto their floor before the trio. She motions to all of it. _"I… also don't come from this…_ 'Archipelago' _. Nor from this clan you keep talking about. Well, I do, but… not in the way you think. I… come from a land_ beyond _your snow belt."_

Oh, _boy_. More impossible news. Now he was feeling light-headed – more than usual, actually. This dragon was flipping reality on its head in their first 'conversation' alone. He shudders to think of their next ones. Val was far too engrossed in the implications for potential hijinks to ensue to care about her very existence. _"Ah, jeez; and just when I thought I had reached my breaking point…"_ mutters Hiccup.

 _"Thing is… these so-called merchants – they also come from my sovereign nation. Beyond your perimeter. I would know. They speak_ my _native tongue."_

 _"Then how in this realm did they survive the belt? Okay, in your case – maybe I can buy it. Dragons are hardy creatures. But human excursions so far into that damned wall… none of them has ever made it back."_

 _"T-that's the thing. I, I have no idea... they can do anything if they put their minds to it, though."_ Anna then pauses, an idea slowly boiling in the crypts of her head. _"Wait. Perhaps there was a gap in the belt?"_

 _"If it's worth anything to you,"_ he says, puffing, _"we recently discovered some gaps in the snow – though, some much with depressions much deeper than most. Wonder if there's anything making them."_

 _"Ah. That explains everything!"_ she cheeps. A worried frown quickly forms on her face not a moment later. _"But that would mean…"_

He frowns, his backbone stiffening straight, _"Anna, what is it?"_

 _"Hiccup… these merchants. They are no merchants at_ all _."_

Wait. Doubletake. He chafes the bridge of his nose. _"But… they look just like them! Looks and everything."_

 _"Yeah, us Russians have a reputation for blending into the crowd. Our reconnaissance team, even more so."_

 _"Wait, reconnaissance?"_ probes Hiccup.

 _"Yeah… That kind of leads into my second point. Russia, the land these merchants and I come from? They also have a reputation for establishing footholds on every nation across the world. If the rumours are true, that is."_

 _"What do you mean by 'the world'?"_

 _"Oh, yeah! You are kind of bordered up here, aren't you? In that case… just imagine the Archipelago – all of those clusterfuck of isles (no offence), but bigger. Approximately a hundred times bigger. I don't_ actually _know; I pulled that out of my ass. But that's basically the size. Plus, this plane, our entire land… is a globe."_

The blunt side of his fist lands on his palm. _"Knew there were time-zones for a reason; that explains everything. Well, that and the Sun and moon being round, but that's a given. A… anything else?"_

 _"Hic-cup, you are not going to like what I say next…"_

He huffs in defiance, crossing his arms. _"Hit me."_

 _"Russia…"_ she slants closer to him – trying to get her point across. _"Their spy division is taking an interest in your… dragons."_

…

 _"Ooooh, conspiracy! Love it! When does the excursion start again?"_

Hiccup wanted to cry. "Damn it, mom."

* * *

 **Longest chapter I have ever typed up. Hope you like the stakes I have set! The plot... continues.**


	26. One to One

"Are you sure you want to leave them alive, Alpha? We have a couple of guards trained on them to fire at the ready."

The question reverberates into a pair of fretting ears; the white dragon had to put in a mighty effort not to smear her head into the piling snow directly below her. The only thing that prevented her from doing so was the fact it would make her colder than she already was.

Thinking nothing of the impression she was about to give, she groans.

"And where did you get the bright idea that the entire nest is supposed to hate humans from, exactly?" she asks with barely contained irritation. "They are simply stubborn creatures; they have their hearts in the right place. But don't take it from me. Direct quote on quote from one of their own, in all honesty. If I recall correctly, the surviving members have not lifted a single finger on any of us yet. Haven't done us any wrong, so why should we? Given their current state, I don't see them doing so anytime soon. Let them go. They discourage people from piercing the Belt once more, all the better. We can't let this happen again. Not after what their colleagues did."

"And I completely agree, Alpha," the lieutenant acknowledges, bowing in respect. "I just hope it won't come and bite us in the ass again in the future."

"Oh? Up the anal cavity, you say? Might I remind you that you are currently committing an act of insubordination?"

That was the fastest she has seen a high-ranking officer shift from confident to pissing-all-over-themselves mode. His pale face covered in barely. Contained. Terror. "I-I-I…"

She holds a deadpan glare. "That was a joke. Jeez, what do you take me for – a dictator like Baldur was? Loosen up a little; everybody's a friend on this nest," her back straightens, shoulders hoist – puffing out a quick, chilly breath, "now, as for your views on them… no. We will not be provoking them in the near future. Or any future. If we don't give second chances, we are no better than the humans that don't. Not that they will pay much heed to our mercy. We are the bigger men."

"I…" He pauses for a bit, the gears and cogs in his mind working to process her words. After a while, he yields. His claws tap the ground. "Alright. No wonder the elders made you Alpha. That tongue of yours…" His ears flatten from their tentativeness for a bit. "Your cub would have been so like you."

Youch. He looked so oblivious about the statement too. That's what happens when you dedicate all your life to the nest, she supposes.

The Alpha lowers her optics, letting a shaky lament escape her rigid jaw. "I know."

With that done and orders exchanged, he promptly takes off from her Berg as gracefully as he did enter not a few minutes ago. Just as he was about to depart from sight, however, her voice pierces through the shrill screech of the inner-Belt's wrath, reaching him in the nick of time.

"Don't forget to provide shielding from the cold," she prompts him, raising a stern claw. "Cloths, suits, their own equipment and the like. Just make sure they get to Mer unharmed and pneumonia-free."

He nods in intrepid attention. "Aye."

A strong beat of his wings later, and the lieutenant departs from her wary eyes.

What a relief, too. For no sooner than three seconds later…

...

* * *

His departure left her ample room to blurt out a choked sob she has willed all of her body to keep in.

"Damn it, Aela, damn it…" she hisses. "Get a grip on yourself. No more. None of this anymore. Pup's gone. She's dead. Pup…"

...

She's never getting over this, is she?


	27. Piece of Mine

**_Given the work-load I have received in the last couple of days, I can see myself only updating so much in the coming weeks. Might see some long gaps in between chapters. Rest assured: I will try my hardest to finish this fic._**

* * *

 _"Then… this became more than just an expedition to appease curiosity's sake…"_

* * *

…

God, did her body ache. And _that_ was coupled with the boredom that had roosted himself on the tip of her wings. He sniggers at her, his legs flaying back and forth excitedly. Cocky bastard.

Laying on the floor in the same position for hours and hours, with not a thing to do. Laying on the floor being an utter hypocrite, not having a slither of motivation to do anything otherwise.

Her eye shakes feebly to the vehement radiance of Hiccup's window.

She turns her head and coughs. Saliva sputters against the wood. Deep inside, she knew better than to lay here… she'd sooner lose her mind than succumb to starvation if anything else.

Minute after minute, hour after hour in that damned, closeted house. And by all rights and fairness, the place was far from it – the closest thing this island has to luxury in all honesty… all the homemade gadgets and contraptions Hiccup apparently concocted laid exposed everywhere, waiting to be used.

Of course, she'd been given, and received, the free graces of his house so long as she laid low. _For the sake of your anonymity_ , he said. _Before we come up with a plan about what to do with you._

Yet, contrary to anyone's wishes and anybody's good intentions… in typical fashion, Anna never makes the effort to embrace their warm, open invitations to creature comforts. Instead, she objects it, deters from it. Actively hostile. She knew she was acting childish; the dragon knew this was not the way to go about it all. But for whatever reason, she felt no motivation or inclination to do… anything.

Because what good could she possibly do but wait and not make a pinned ass of herself?

All three of the Berkians went to take their leave after a while of held breaths, Hiccup and the black dragon having to depart for obvious reasons. She wasn't sure what the mother was up to, though.

She was almost certain she would have spit out her drink when he told him _he_ was the monarchy around here.

 _A little bit too young, don't you think?_ she inquired earlier.

 _Never too early to start,_ he had replied back.

Hah; never too early to start… what a joke.

Heavenward. Her one eye gazes such. The wobbly thing traces along its running lines… dull. Of a murky texture, she manages to note. Unkempt. The afternoon sun had introduced itself inside the room not too long ago. Beheld within its chasms, the glory of the midwinter sunlight.

An empty giggle gushes from her maw.

It's funny.

There she was, staring intently at her childhood arch-nemesis. An inanimate piece of wood. Well, not exactly the wood itself but… God, she was dumb back then. Dad would automatically pull out the 'child's brain' trump card whenever she did something really stupid when she was younger. But it's hard not to think of it that way.

She smiles at the thought. Always so open for adventure, always so eager to go out and play. It didn't help that Galina was always egging her on for such merriments.

Ack. Doesn't help at all, that line of thinking.

Point is, Anna was _really_ dumb.

So much so Anna would shudder at the sight of a wooden ceiling. _Shudder_. At least in the past. Doesn't make it inexcusable. In hindsight, it was as obvious to her as to anyone else that her fear was overreactive.

All of this dirt rooted to when she was but a naïve, inquisitive hatchling.

Like that fact would change a thing.

Some… some irrational fear about plank intervals – the in-betweens. Her young mind tried rationalising her fear constantly. Maybe it was the fact the gaps looked so trivial… so low, so foreboding… it felt like at any moment, she would be swallowed up into its drowning darkness.

Then… an eternity to ponder on the precipice of death.

Her demons, the worst among them.

Perhaps, it was the concept itself that tied a knot around the ends of her shallow throat – of being _alone_ – cut out from society in all of its entirety. Nobody there to comfort you. Nobody to hold your paw and tell you everything is alright. No family.

Her appearance didn't do her any favours. Some days, all she could fantasise about was how _good_ everything could have been if she wasn't what she was. This reptile… this… body. It's a curse. But God has a plan. Always has one. He is just. He is just.

Isn't He?

…

The backside of her raised head swiftly thuds the planks below. A weary sigh creeps out her lips. She supposes she won't ever understand.

But that doesn't make the problem anymore unannounced, no.

It's still there.

On more than one occasion did she feel the urge to decisively not exist for the rest of the day – which she means to say, staying 'in bed' and not feeling any semblance of motivation to do anything at all. But Gal would always kick her and whip her depressed ass back into shape should she fall into that pit of gloominess. _"Don't drop this attitude, and your body parts will be tucked away in the dingy corners of an alleyway,"_ she said. _"Life is cruel, it revels in it. With your appearance, even more so. Contact with people will be hard. Living alone most of the time will be hard. I can only provide so much… Don't let it pick your limp body and control you."_

…

God-damnit. All this does for her was getting her down. But could it be helped?

Could it?

Snorting, her back rolls over on its side, two back legs bringing her lying form up to shape. _Not if Gal could help it._ Now the feeling was this dull throbbing at the back of her mind. She hates it. Wants nothing more than to discard it. The problem wasn't so much as when. Rather, it was whether if it even was an 'if'.

Padding over to Hiccup's bedroom door, a scuffed claw nudges the handle, eye pronouncing its last goodbyes before she ventures further into her prison block.

A thrust.

The chilly embrace of a hallway; trailing left to nowhere, and right to uniform outlines of auburn light. You could pass this place off as a gaol in Russia and nobody would even notice. Well, except for the entire thing being made out of wood, of course. Imagine, trapped in a wooden house. She would have scrubbed her fringe if she could.

No time to be particular, now. Not when she was somehow feeling cold. Probably came down with something in that Belt.

 _Click, click, click._ Down the hall her claws tippy-tap, the one path obliging her to remain on its tracks. A sinking feeling soon settles at the base of her stomach, of what – she doesn't know… all she is absolutely certain about now is that her emotions spiralling out of control again.

Not like they had any space to thrash along this straight path… God, keep it together.

…

But…

…

Livid, Anna gives that brain in that cranium of hers a good shake. It's probably nothing. It _is_ nothing.

After a time longer than she probably made it out to be, the dragon reaches the end – the deltas of the opening expanding a bit. A new sight graces her eye.

As she steps into the room, the air splashes against her face – wind from the ocean's reap. Open windows graced the household. Outside her cell, the wee minutes before sets the evening sun... soft auburn slowly melding into a warm palette of ginger. For ample ambience light, she guesses. Though, for a supposed 'king', he sure had a lot of prime spots any half-minded sniper would have wet dreams of—

She then swiftly points an exasperated scowl at herself. By God, rifles? Here? Have to keep reminding herself: this is not Russia, and it is certainly not Dudinka.

Her eye prances about the place. For all its worth, it looked fairly ordinary by her standards; by what her time as a thief reflected, leastways. Well, minus the techno gizmo the mayor had fit all over that shithole.

Living area, one generously spaced couch, a multitude of personal touches in the centre… and…

And some sort of torn leather… tail on the wall?

She scoffs.

Why would anybody choose a mantelpiece in _that_ condition? Doesn't matter; probably some tradition she wasn't privy to over here… in this… Berk. Hehe. Berk. She heard British tourists bring that term about sometimes in their conversations. Something involving defecation and derogatory jokes, so she was told.

To the right, a kitchen installation – crops and all sorts of ingredients… though she didn't know why those wall-fitted cabinets couldn't hold any more. Especially by a political figure's standards.

Attempting not to get ahead of herself… her eye soon completes its rounds.

The clock strikes left.

In the corner, over there. A perched desk of sorts.

Workplace lit by candles, it looks like. Typical, with papers and parchments laying everywhere. The only thing different was that there was an ink spill in substitute of a typewriter. The place could really use a lot less inked out, barely comprehensible parchments, though—

Red at the edge of her eye.

Her head twirls.

On the kitchen table, something off.

Her eye narrows, stepping towards the object now. Anybody with half their set of eyes could tell you it wasn't supposed to be there.

Sitting on the surface unassumingly… was a red duffel bag.

The primary cause for alarm there was that it was _her_ duffel bag.

A frown soon settles on her face. Anna didn't even _see_ Hiccup pass near it, much less snatch it from her calculating eyes. For someone to have outplayed her… must have been too exhausted if she managed to not notice _that_. The dragon even thought it to be on his night desk this whole time, she wasn't one to let sacred objects go missing so easily.

Grabbing hold of it, her last memory of her clings onto her back and to where it rightfully belongs.

She's here. And she sighs. The door opens. A sudden coldness whispers across her face. She ignores it.

The boy-chief's nightstand was… to the left, she was pretty sure that past-Anna recalled that piece of furniture—

The red bag was there.

G—

G—

Gal's bag was still there. On the stand.

 _Scttchk!_

Her grip falters.

The bag she was holding plummets.

The ground trembles.

The door behind her seals.

Then.

A screech.

Spreads about, hurting.

Hurting so, so, so, so much… Anna's ear frills shuttered bolt.

Then it came.

An arm sprouts out of the dropped Redding.

Something was in there, something was in there. But what?

Tip-toe, tip-toe its bloodied fingers tap—

—she couldn't move, she couldn't move, why can't she move?!

It snakes, snakes, snakes onto her hind leg, digits clenching her flesh – the vice of a cobra when subduing its prey… nails dig into her scales, and for all its leathery worth, couldn't resist the ferocity of that snake's maul.

Anna, wide-eyed, wails—out exploded the blistering air from her useless lungs. Red fluid oozing sluggishly down in an unremitting gush… and all she could see behind the stream…

A venomous, murderous beam of glee.

She couldn't see its face. It came out of the bag. The edges of its lips crook upwards, going where there were never supposed to go, and it bursts still. Tears of terror fall free.

A blonde girl claws out of the red satchel, unholy dins reverberating about the room. _Click, click, click._

She crawls, crawls, crawls, laughs.

A chest removed of life – free of skin and dignity – replacing it, tattered strings of flesh; whence sprouted forth straggling a pounding heart, splurging and sputtering onto the planks a pool of blood—

Its heart was bleeding – a red so pure, so squarely – there on her hands it leaked – blood dripping like the fountains of hell down onto the woods below… Sink it did into the cracks of nothingness – the black beast was so hungry, its stomach a null pit – the thumping wouldn't stop, it wouldn't stop; why won't it stop?!

She couldn't kill it, she won't kill it, why won't she _kill_ the abomination?! Her claws dig, dig, dig into the planks below. _Youyouyouyouyou were supposed to be DEAD!_

A smile. "How could you know?" it replies back.

 _You ARE! I saw you DIE! I cremated your corpse to FUCKING ASHES!_

Then the girl hoists its back and gets up on its fours and then stands and treads sluggishly to her. An odour so unholy, so corrupt – the smell of burnt flesh… and the iciness of a metallic glint… it slithers up, up, up her nostrils. Anna fights the urge to vomit. "How could you forget me, Anna?" the girl utters out its lips. Devoid. Emotionless. A husk.

But… she sounds so real…

"Then why do you act this way?"

The girl leers.

"Am I worth so little to you?" the thing soon hisses, tilting its head. "How could you forget me, Anna? Was I worth so little to you? How could you live with yourself? Why do you revel so in your cruelty?"

 _BUT I AM NOT CRUEL!_

"Then why couldn't you save me?"

 _BA-DUMP!_

 _BA-DUMP!_

 _BA-DUMP!_

She couldn't breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Choking. Paws crease the base of her throat, gripping it with a vileness to rival the nails that held Jesus on His cross. She needed a way out, out, out!

She lunges herself from it, back ramming against the door.

Her paws and body and legs drive with all their might against. Jittering, more, more. It won't budge. _Please give, please give, please give…_

The door wouldn't budge.

Her eye spins.

 _Please please please please please, just let me go…_

"So why don't you say so?"

Her paws slam the door. Maniacally; have to be louder, have to be harder. _I am, I am, I am. Please… Why won't you go away?!_

"Because you won't let me."

Slam. Slam. Slam!

Was she mad – was she crazy? She couldn't be alive, could she?! Is she?! _OH, GOD! HELP! HELP ME!_

Why couldn't she breathe?!

Breathe breathe,

 ** _BREATHE!_**

Then, out of the girl's back, it pulls something out... she sees it in her fingers. A trembling hand holds a silver-bloodshot glow… a dagger.

The girl closes in. The knife glints in the air. Closer, closer…

Anna screams. Screams and screams until she couldn't scream any longer. Her throat rasps and tears and leaks.

It raises it.

Centring on her veiny arms now. Her begging served no purpose.

The blade lodges.

* * *

...

Open your eyes.

...

* * *

The girl was gone.

The bag on the floor was gone.

She was alone.

Nobody was there.

Scratches daubed the room all over.

* * *

There was a bloodied knife on her clenched paw.

* * *

Anna couldn't bear to eat the fish Valka whipped up that night.

She made it an important point to lie about her wound.


	28. Sure! Damage Control

_Tick._ The cod plops once. Eye gazing its azure shimmer intently on the silvery thing; candle lights shifting about the kitchen table in an auburn bath; evening wind wisping sombrely throughout the darkening house.

 _Tick. Tick._ Two claws soon rub one another in sync.

Anna's light head bobs, coming to the conclusion that the fish was quite slimy, alright. Not even a pot laid bare in the orifices of the quaint kitchen. Nothing she could safely use, anyways. She _still_ wasn't quite sure how Valka was going about all of this, but she definitely looked like a shrewd fellow. Better to take the word of an old woman than not take one at all.

A finger snaps.

 _"I knew it was spoilt!"_ drawls the woman sitting opposite of Anna. She stares at her. _"It was looking at me funnier than the other ones. Can't believe it actually bit back…"_

Anna quickly shakes her head in a fit of courtesan panic. _"No, no, no – it's… quite fine, ma'am."_ Her shoulder blades shrug, claw lancing the flesh's pink surface once more. _"It's just unusual for me, is all."_

Valka's knife shreds through the flesh of her beef. She made it a point to swallow before she spoke. _"W-what is?"_

 _"Well,"_ drawls Anna. _"This… this delicacy—"_

 _"If you consider_ this _a delicacy it pains me to ponder what you've gobbled down up until this point…"_ the woman soon quips.

The snide remark _almost_ works on the dragon, but her controlled nature—oh, how _detrimentally_ disciplined it was—bites back her funny-bone from spasming uncontrollably. _"I-I assure you, it's not like that at all; I have eaten well, ma'am! It's just…"_

 _"Well?"_

Her poise collapses with the subtlety of a balloon getting prickled by a factory nail. _"Well… raw,"_ she ends up absolving. _"Rawer than usual, to my liking."_

And boy did that do wonders for the dragon expert's dragon knowledge dragon cache. _"Uh…"_ Valka was almost excessively blockading her lungs; cheeks puffing. _"Clarify?"_

 _"I… I'd cook it myself if you'd allow me to. The kitchen would boast not a spot of filth when I am done, I assure you."_

Widening her eyes, the woman brings up her slender arms – quivering her hands left and right to their wrist's extent. _"NO, no, not that, girl. What you want to do with your food is fine. I am just shocked that you prefer your meat cooked."_ She points her thumb at the back… somewhere; looked like she was pointing the couch… didn't matter to her, leastways. _"You know that black turdball you saw earlier we call a Night Fury? Your darker cousin? He mentioned something about dragons' stomachs finding cooked food disagreeable. Vomit out all of your insides disagreeable. So, to see another find it a necessity in cooking is just… remarkable. Actually, you know what? Normally, I could whip up a mean cod stew given enough time. But that black cat with wings wiped anything of that notion. So… leave that cod there for now and let me see if the cooks over at the Great Hall can't whip up something worthy of your size. And your stomach. Probably."_

 _"Then you will be glad to know I only take what any normal human needs! …also probably. It wasn't like I was in any position to change my diet to the contrary… Whatever. Point is, I may be a dragon, but I am far from needing meat like some fat hog."_

She throws her arms in the air. _"I have no reference as to what you are referring to but I going to automatically assume you look nothing like that. And you don't. Look, after what you have been through, you need the refuel. Come. If they can fit a quarter of Berk's dragons in there they can certainly fit you."_

Anna's ear frills kneel at the prospect. _"Won't people stare?"_

 _"If you make a fool of yourself, sure. And I doubt a courteous girl like you would stir the pot much. Where's the harm in that?"_

 _"At the bottom of the cauldron is where my_ harm _will be."_

 _"It will be fine. Come on."_

 _"I still don't know…"_

The woman seemed to not like how her replies have been turning out as of late… evident by the hand resting on her hip. _"Gods; same with me, same with Hiccup. Who knew a dragon could be such a push-over?"_

 _"Hey! Who are you calling…"_ Once realisation had stricken her with the un-subtlety of a brick on her gob, her ear-frills dim further. " _Y-yeah. Alright. I… guess so."_

 _"So… why do you let him? Let me?"_

 _"I…"_ Her paw finds itself grasping her other hind leg. _"I don't know. I just… I dunno. I don't really know my way around with people. Other people, I mean. Only ever had real conversation or contact with my family. So, I guess… I am nervous? That's the word?"_

 _"So, what you are saying is that you are inexperienced with having conversations with people in general?"_

 _"To put it in simple terms, perhaps."_

Valka then taps a finger on her chin, staring up to the night… ceiling. _"Then I can't help but find myself not being agreeable with your tongue of lies…"_

Somewhere, an inconspicuous pin piece fell from a haystack.

Anna gulps. _"H-how did you…"_

 _"Normally, I would attribute my talents at reading dragons' facial expressions to my extended ten-year vacation with said species; but with you, I would just say it was common sense. You don't place yourself very highly, I take it?"_

Wow.

Read like an open book.

Actually, more like a sheet of music if she was quite honest. With most of the notes being on one chord and they were just minims. Were her trills really that obvious? " _Well, yeah. Everybody is basically better than me at everything. More or less. Better linguists, better instrumentalists, better engineers… I am a… 'jack of all trades but master of none'. I am a liability."_

But the woman responded with something well and above the call of duty. Shooting from her seat, a rough screech tore on the planks below. Valka had just sat up. To which Anna had also subsequently _jerked_ to. The woman can be terrifying when she wanted to. From her perspective, at least. If this was how Vikings acted she couldn't possibly ponder what the… "others" were like. Not like she had any reference to such people, anyway.

…

God, she was a coward in _addition_ to being a push-over.

Gal couldn't have been any more right in her judgment.

Valka, to Anna's quickly reallocated attention from the sovereign land of Self-Loathing, soon steps closer… closer she had anticipated, really… but the gentle expression that had spread on her pale face after her stunt? In all honesty, it was most certainly welcome. The woman opens her mouth. _"Okay, look, I may have been you for roughly half a day – give or take… but you most certainly aren't."_

 _"But how can you tell? You aren't_ me. _"_

 _"There."_

Then came her completely baffled confusion. _"Wai… W-what?"_ she squeaks.

 _"See, right there. You just proved my point. You aren't a push-over. You aren't a liability. Or any of those things you described yourself being."_ Valka leans over the table, her body's shadow draping over the dragon's form. A single hand brushes against her naked cheek. _"You are_ worth _something. You… you are just. Just… hurting over something that happened in the past. You aren't in the right place mentally. And that is completely_ fine _. This is my solemn vow: I won't press the issue unless I have express permission from you to do so. Okay?"_

Her words barely seemed a whisper to her frail ears. In front of her presently was not the woman she knew to be Valka, merely the mother to a young Viking chief… but the physical embodiment of another man so dear to her that she would rather take his place in the crevasses and oubliettes of Hell itself so that he could breathe the clear air again. Just one last time.

The dragon's throat, sandy and parched as it was, trembles on itself.

Seconds pass… for so long she held her tears back, held in that sweet, sweet temptation. So hard, so hard.

…but that would have to wait another day. _"O… Okay,"_ she finally resigns.

The woman leans down for a hug, the dragons great burly form soon taking up the space. _"Thank you. Thank you."_

Time for her seemed to have dilated to minutes, to hours… and for all intents and purposes, Anna wouldn't mind waiting there for slightly longer.

However, to Anna's minor disappointment, Valka shifts from the embrace. And to her further awkwardness and slight terror, the woman's eyes stumble downward her form; stumbling upon a gash Anna forgot she was supposed to guard with all her life. But fate, it seems, would have no means to act upon the wound today.

Instead, the woman grasps the side of her head again, nodding in affirmation.

 _"Come. We ought to get that front paw-leg patched up. Gothi must have missed a spot."_

The other eye-lid – or what was left of it – widens up out of habit with her right. What? Other people were going to see her so soon? " _Wait ma'am, I thought… what about Hic-cup?"_

She chuffs her breath in response, her legs stomping about the cottage – slowly but surely proceeding towards the mouth of the evening breeze. _"Agh, to the depths of Helheim with 'plans'! Let's go. Hiccup and Toothless won't be here for another hour, anyway – their round-the-clock duties and whatnot. I can make excuses later. That gash looks bad."_ Her hand finds itself on the doorframe. She leans. _"Nobody will notice our departure this late into the evening, despite us being on the throat of Berk. And it won't be because of slumber… Damned mead-chugging fools…"_

Though hesitant, Anna's body was reeling for the open air of the outside world… anywhere but the confines of this dreaded place. Through no fault but her own, leastways.

She, as desperate as she was to maintain the good values she was raised in… eventually gives in. Gal was a very, very bad influence. _"O… Okay."_

* * *

 **Split into two chapters as I can't churn 5,000 words reasonably quick enough. Gotta get that content flow consistent.**

 **...**

 **Have I ever told you that Applicational Calculus was a bitch?**


	29. Tora, Tora, Tora!

_What a view._

All of her breathless thoughts presently churning about her mind condensed one three-word sentence. Dudinka may have been in the process of turning itself into a contemporary ocean port, but the beauty this 'Berk' possessed cascades _anything_ that setts of brick had to offer. A grand, grand run for its money…

Laid before her was the very soul of Berk, the evening sun blasting its radiance across the paletted sky in all of its orange-palleted glory. Towering structures, things so tall she had doubts of being real… spreading and sprouting out from the bare earth like they were trees, some daring to even transcend the height of Hiccup's own perch.

Gravel streets lit by only the snuggest torches; houses and estates painted in the most eccentric ways… dragons being the prominent theme across the Viking board. But what was most interesting of all to her… were its inhabitants.

Well, Vikings spread about the place like ants, to be sure – virtually submerged the place with a testosterone-bathed stench so ghastly she could smell it from here – but the ones who tagged along with them… they weren't regular Joes you would stumble across at your everyday bazaar.

Beings, reptiles of varying stature and status coloured the place – a riot of colours almost impeding on just how much _content_ her dragon eye could process… before becoming dazed, that is.

To think there were so many species in her genus…

From up here, standing on this couture... the impression it all made on her was quite clear. Berk... it was controlled chaos, through and through. And it most certainly warranted from her a slit eye. But… there was something helplessly beautiful about the sight, despite it.

Judging by Valka's expression and what she was going to say next, she was clearly impressed too. Though, what the woman felt behind her exterior was far more than simply appeasement… no, instead, it was a deep sense of completeness. Content. Turning to Anna, she crosses her arms, smiling – whether it was the cold or simple unsureness, the dragon couldn't tell.

 _"Dragons and humans, Anna. Look at them,"_ she began, almost in a trance.

Look she did, alright. The little things that previously went unnoticed the first time 'round… a pair or so of dragons squabbling all over the place for the last fish – their mammalian companions snickering and hooting at the sight; children and dragons she assumed to be no older than two… a game of chasey they were so devoted to it was as if they had the whole world wrapped around their little fingers, plus paws, if you'd like. Like how one would cheer for your mate in a bar brawl, like how much of her childhood had been like with… Gal.

She smiles faintly. Not like Anna hid in the attic and surveyed the bar below her like the cheeky little bugger she was, or deliberately letting Gal think she was alone before scaring the lights out of her… or anything. Whatever it was, however, all of her exploits and keen eyesight – those, skills and hidden talents… she would bring to her grave.

Anna made no point of openly showing that memory to Val, though. Not that she'd care.

 _"Completely different species on the opposite sides of the organismic spectrum… working together,"_ the woman drawls once more. _"Some days I can scarcely believe it. Well, I better believe it soon. All of us old farts better. This damned view would always sober me up."_

While Val's constant liberal use of language terrified her to no end, she couldn't help but feel vindicated with what she said. So much like Gal.

So much.

 _"Heh,"_ she chuckles, piercing through Anna's hazy stream of thoughts. _"Hiccup is still my personal pincushion, make no mistake… but…"_ she drifts off suddenly, eyes meandering over the horizon, self-consciously snapping back to reality not long after; a shake of the head. _"I never dreamed of this happening. Not when I was first introduced to the true nature of dragons, not when I saw him for the first time in…"_

A trickle of a tear flowed down her cheek... much to Anna's surprise… and now, she was obligated to stand more attentive than ever.

 _"I am so proud of my son, Anna. So proud."_

The chokes that accompanied her words almost felt too familiar with the reptile, and the sing-song twangs of pity soon reflected on her present expression.

Observative, delusive Val brushes off the variation.

 _"Even with my failings as a mother through no fault but my own… even with my own gods-damned selfishness. He still made it out on top._ _He is the bravest boy a mother could ever have. And the bravest man in the whole wide world._

 _"_ He _was the first one to break the mould, Anna. To think outside this Viking cesspit of a litterbox. He was the first in generations to shift our people's courses and lead us into a new era._

 _"I… just hope…"_ the woman stares down her calloused fingers for a bit, grasping and unholstering her grip like claws, _"just hope it will last a good while._

 _"Nothing good ever lasts. My aunt had… well, she's long dead, but she put it into words but than I ever could. 'Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times. Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times.'_

Anna draws a sigh. She has personally been held witness to that scenario one too many times.

Usually, she would be put in the middle of the second part.

But Val, for all her fiery Gestapo and mischief, marches on with the enthusiasm of a soldier relieved of their station… and to the cold, reformed world ahead of them.

 _"Have you ever noticed, Anna… wherever you go, whatever new culture you encounter… they all follow this… this one cycle? Yes – some… some cycle, that kind of just sits there in history, like some oracle, some king; not wavering in his purpose, nor yielding in his dictatorship._

 _"It will… keep on going, this wheel. Maybe it doesn't shift course – maybe, maybe it will_ never _shift course. Maybe there's this straight road in front of it that it made itself so convinced that should it waver off the beaten track, for even a moment… it will die. Well… at least it stayed true to its namesake. It has, kept on happening._

The masked woman soon halts in her path on towards the supposed hut, Anna stopping in her tracks with her.

 _"And it won't change if this damned generation could help it, societal revolution or not. Soon as I die, soon as Hiccup dies – soon as some hotshot new Viking gets the grand idea of winning over the people – and as I no doubt know will succeed… I don't want to think about it; but… it's hard not to. Hiccup and Astrid both don't look fond of the idea of starting a family._

But going against all she has previously... the severity of the content she has just laid upon Anna's shoulders and all... she laughs. Laughs and laughs as the whole world watches – even as its candle soon sputters out.

 _"Heh,"_ she finally absolves, turning heel with a defiant face and resuming what she had first started. Anna, with no say nor desire to input her thoughts into the matter, follows. _"Well, damn cycle never said anything about having smart men."_

Anna decidedly agrees, the gushing of warm vapour seeping out her nostrils.

Val turns her head back all the while, staring the dragon in the inquisitive eye.

 _"All this talk about how much Vikings suck dick reminds me… Seeing so many stupid boys at once. Just a total recall. It was noon. And the boys crowded me to a corner. All trying to hit on me and coaxing me to head to their place. Said they were worthy or some shit like that. Anyway, I kicked them in the balls soon after. All four, squishy pairs. They balled their eyes out afterwards. Ha ha! That was fun."_

Anna lowers her head a bit, almost as if in disbelief that any of them would have the chemical qualifications to be any of those wandering hulks of muscle on the streets below in the first place. _"Geez,"_ she chortles. _"Did they even have any in the first place?"_

 _"Well, if they didn't, note that I also punched them in the face."_

* * *

 **...**

 **Need I empathise how much Applicational Differential Calculus takes the piss?**


	30. One Fell Shriek

That old woman had been… thorough, to put it mildly.

Anna didn't know whether it was the sheer gruffness Gothi handled her hind leg or her stink-eye that seemed to impale this faucet of unmentionable lies… but it made her recoil, regardless.

And that, it seemed, warranted a full physiological check-up from the _other_ mother hen that was Valka. My God, she held more similarities to Galina than the dragon had liked.

Not that she was complaining—

 _Gah!_

Her one eyelid slams down.

If there was one thing she hated more than the birds that seemed to make a mocking of every step she so drew, it was the light! A bright, dawning light that seemed to split her eyes open every day. It was probably the Sun's revenge for her exploiting his somewhat long-distance ex-girlfriend he still felt some attachment to for some reason.

And through the tree's foliage, the light sapped… coating the forest floor – gentle honeycombs of gold. Every step Valka and Anna take, the leaves from a winter's reap scrunch below them… and the forest called out to them, distant, tugging at their skin.

Anna decided that it felt quite chilly.

They now trekked through the underbelly of Berk – a path that Val insisted that even Hiccup was guilty of taking every once in a while; a calling card to his past, as the masked woman briefly put it. A path he took whenever he needed his alone time, or so she was explained to in a very awkward manner. It had to be normal for one to stuff up when explaining some facet of their personal life, right? Right?

Regardless, they walked on: their destination – a lesser known gate facilitating passage into the Great Hall. Prying eyes wouldn't land on Anna's peculiar choice of one-sided clothing, the intended effect…

Overall, it was the same-same. The usual suspects, if you will. One figure leading the other… and the other being…

God, she was a such a needy _child_.

 _"Anna?"_

She whips around her tattered head, claws detaching their grip from the ground – a slight stagger, the forest floor scrapes in unison; caught balancing on the beam again – as per usual. And by God, did her earthed wounds from her oceanic thrashing find that disagreeable!

 _"S-sorry?"_ the dragon squeaks, praying to whatever angel looked down upon her from heaven that Val had not witnessed that… that _charade_. But much to her surprise and relief as she analyses the woman's face, her wish had been granted.

The woman looked far more engrossed to whatever was on the soil. And soon enough, two eyes were replaced with three. _"A great many things can be found given the right amount of attentiveness. Can you see it?"_

 _"Oh? O-oh! Uh…"_ Anna extends one of her claws, tracing through the soil over what looked like some… claw marks, of all things. _"Yeah. Marks."_

 _"My son laid begging for his life on this very spot."_

The dragon's eyebrows shot _UP_. _That_ took a quick turn.

 _"Umm…"_ she jogs her head hurriedly, _"elaborate?"_

 _"Toothless, if you remember – and yes, you have been hearing that right for the past few days or so – pinned him here. These holes over here?"_ she waves her finger over three or so depressions. _"His own claws. He was going to_ kill _him, Anna. Had a charged shot and everything – and Hiccup was staring down the cannon's barrel. In the end, Toothless decided against it for one reason or another. Heh. Funny how spending time and getting to know each other turns your opinions of him on its head right quick. So, yeah. From then on, not a few weeks later, soul-mates. Happily, ever after."_

Slightly concerned and contemplative initially, she eventually decided that it was best not to judge a people she had no relation to or _remote_ understanding of. So, she settled with something that had reached some universal sign of understanding. A sigh. _"Huh."_

 _"Anyways,"_ Val says, getting up from her crouch; Anna does like so. _"What I took from all of that... is that we can always change... given the right circumstances and the perfect amount brain injuries sustained leading up to said change. Well, we always have time for semantics later. Come on; we best get there before the Hall gets stuffed."_

 _"I..."_ A trembling groan. _"Okay."_

* * *

The most striking thing to Anna felt when she first snuck in the Great Hall – the back of it, at least – with Valka… was the homeliness. True, it was nothing remotely like the many stores and buildings of Dudinka from her past raids. There was no indication of _any_ advancement of technology… tiled floors, carpets made of quilts, water engines, _coals_ … or things even as common as grandfather clocks.

Actually, expecting a clock seems a rather tall order given the lack of cogs…

It was simply a mahogany wood-tiled dwelling where smoothed stones once reigned. Hand-painted galleries, some tribal carvings, more fireplaces than she could count… And yet – it still retained in the atmosphere some form of… longing, maybe… maybe nostalgia? Yes; this place had quite a quaint feel to it.

Well, didn't matter currently, leastways… not when she and Val were trying to remain elusive of their presence. Some scoping and slinking down the corridors of candle-lit softness later, Valka breaks the silence.

 _"Hey. See that?"_ She points down the whole way, Anna's vision tracing, tracing… until it comes across a shut door – light and shadow emanating from the gap below.

 _"Yeah?"_ affirms Anna.

 _"You wanna stir up some trouble? That's probably him with his 'plans', as he called it. Always locked in there… almost never coming out – but it had never been as bad as it was this week. His shell's cracking, so to speak."_

The tone – that damned tone she felt so accustomed to – be it Dad or Gal. Mischief. Oh, Lord, was she familiar with mischief… all the times Gal had her carry pales of water only to dump its contents on her friends.

And then she remembered – like she always does when something doesn't add up with Galina – they really didn't have any business being here. This was just curiosity, wasn't it? Or was this…

Oh.

Oh, no. She turns.

 _"You want to stir a cock-ahoot so quickly?"_ Anna seethes.

 _"That's the plan."_

Terror, terror at this woman, terror at herself for even agreeing to head over to this damned, crowded place. _"The plan?"_ the dragon soon whispers… _"w-wha-what plan?!"_

 _"You will see…"_

Val, oh so cheeky and magnificent Val, was leaning her form by the door's surface now. One hand caressed its surface.

 _"And all of your reservations about publicity…_

Tug.

 _"Will go…"_

Push.

 _"To waste."_

* * *

Hiccup, ever-studious, ever-unyielding public speaker to the rest of his fellow observing chiefs – twirls.

"Mom? What…"

With a barely audible moan.

"Oh, Freja."

And from then on, buzzing along… as the candle drew nearer to the creature's face… a thousand gasps flung about the room.

Little did he know, however… how much she'd change... with simply one fell shriek.

 _"CYKA BYLAT!"_


	31. On the Contrary

…nearly change, leastways. Upon swift recognition and subsequent action, he remedied the quickly escalating situation by pointing out that all the chiefs, too, had wax and cataracts… and that he, personally, heard or saw no such thing – such tall words, such tall colour of scales – from the intruding creature. Thinking nothing of it nor possessing the capacity to even think from it anyway, they subscribed to Hiccup's hastily cobbled together head-canon.

He didn't know whether he should vindicate it as a stroke of valiant genius on his part or be mildly concerned at the rather thick underline of ink underneath the 'mutual Viking stupidity' part of the brochure. Either way, heads will roll.

Naturally, he called off the meeting immediately afterwards, coming up with some lame excuse… praying to the gods for some gods-forsaken validation from his peers.

Imagine his surprise when the chieftains bought into it for some reason. He would have imagined his stammering as a bad indicator as to why.

And, now, he soon finds himself standing in front of a certain pair of fidgety troublemakers… hopefully within a little-known cubby away from the labyrinth that was the Great Hall. A brief tendril of light entered their burrow occasionally, but otherwise – not much seeped in. Though tempting, he decided against going all 4-tons of Stoick burl on their asses.

 _"Okay,"_ Hiccup sighs, leaning against the wall. _"I just pulled us out of_ that _political shitstorm. They are privier to my word than I take their brains credit from. Now, what in all the four planes of existence possessed you two to do something so_ stupid _?"_

 _"Rave, freak, swear! That will show us!"_ Valka _herself_ raves, ironically.

Hiccup's eyes burrow into his mother's. _"…right."_ He turns away, eyes landing on Anna. _"Surely you have your own thoughts to add to the consensus, Anna?"_

 _"I…"_

 _"She felt uncomfortable—"_

 _"Let her speak for herself, Mom."_

Anna flattens her poise, what with both humans turning to face her all of a sudden. _"…that's… half the truth, Hic-cup."_

 _"Hah!"_

 _"Emphasis on 'half',"_ Hiccup interjects, raising a finger. _"Anna?"_

 _"I… Well, your place is fine… I know you poured your heart and soul into it too. Just… it just… brings up… bad… memories—o-oh, that's how you phrase it at all…"_

Taken aback, Hiccup turns pale. _"Wait! No, no! No, t-that's, that's quite fine, Anna. No hard feelings. I-if you want another place to stay I am more than happy to…"_

Now it was her turn to pale, raising up a paw. To go out of your way – your schedule, even – for the sake of a guest's comfort is unheard of. At least in Dudinka. And it just didn't sit right with her. _"No, no. I have to get over it one way or another. Need the exposure, anyway."_

 _"Oh? Oh. Good. Great, then. I, uh… I…"_ he manages to wheeze… before adjusting his shirt collar. _"Gods, it's stuffy. Does anyone think…?"_

 _"Yeah, makes the two of us,"_ she replies.

 _"Right, right. Alright, then,"_ the chief breathes. Cold vapour blows out… a gust of grey out of his lips. He scratches his scalp – quite greasy for winter, all things considered. _"Anna, you might freak out a little… o-okay, maybe a lot, but unless we want to suffocate – the gateway to the Berkian dragon dwelling is our safest bet for an empty roof."_

Anna then halts what she was about to say to… ponder. Oh, yeah.

Fire does not mix very well with wood should her assumptions ring true… _"So, you have… a hallway… connecting dragons and humans… in a wooden dwelling? D-did I get that right?"_

 _"Why, thy hath no faith in thy own inviter? A shrewd fellow such as I wouldn't be so unbecoming concerning such matters… you are mistaken, I am afraid,"_ he retorts simply… a flamboyancy only eclipsed by that of a peacock flying its colours. _"You see, an engineer such as I wouldn't overlook such simple faults. It's not in the way you thin—"_

 _"It's made of dragon scales."_

He turns – rather striking frown splayed on his face. _"Mom! It was supposed to be a_ surprise _."_

 _"D-dragon scales?"_ squeaks Anna, her eye widening to its fullest. _"You… you…"_

 _"No, of course – we don't kill dragons. I don't know about you… but some… mmm… Gronckle, for instance, shed their scales every once in a while. We simply pick up where they left off. Literally."_

Coughs start to roll from her like the ocean slamming against the cliffside. _"That, that sounds…"_

 _"Yeah, it's not pretty,"_ the chief draws in finality. Hiccup soon turns to gait his feet away from the group, eyes squinting at a… disagreeable memory that seemed to have popped up out of nowhere. Gods. _"Their shit reeks!"_

* * *

 _"Is that…?"_

If it wasn't for another lumbering Viking going out of his way to emanate the loudest footsteps he could physically concur, they would have skirted past this dimly-lit, tucked-away room in its entirety. Anna, for one, found the detour to be a blessing from God Himself. For what stood in front of her… she hadn't had the pleasure of bearing witness to ever since the Music Academy closed its doors.

An honest-to-God cello. In what world…?

 _"Oh, yeah. Nipped it off the spies you told me about earlier. Go ahead. Mock me and my empty pocket. All the others wouldn't shut up… and what a waste of coin it was. Had to keep it in here so that they wouldn't shove the fact down my throat every time I so uttered a word."_

 _"And what a fun time it was, Hic,"_ his mother chirps up.

 _"Not this again…"_

 _"Gawking? From a few I can understand,"_ chips Anna. _"But mocking? Only the most ignorant would say such things. This… this…"_

 _"…is a piece of—"_

 _"ART!"_ she flails.

 _"I know, righ—I am sorry, what?"_

 _"Oh, man! And look at the condition! We never had rooms humid enough to keep it in such good shape… but you, ho… silver platter what with living up north…"_

 _"Uh… Anna? Lost Viking here?"_

She turns around from the instrument, face strained… before working up the compulsive need to giggle at him for some reason. An incredibly uncanny giggle, sure, but a giggle it remained. Because that's _totally_ normal. _"Ah,"_ she eventually follows up. _"Silly me! Apologies. I take it you don't know what a cello is?"_

Hiccup's eyebrows contort; his feet scrawl the planks beneath him, tugging his collar with one hand and at his back, another. _"Should I?"_

 _"No,"_ she responds, eyes almost glittering as bright as a freshly bought lighter. _"But surely, such a piece would have cost you a fortune! And you don't even have the thought to use it. Oh…"_

 _"Well, if it's any consolation… they didn't sell it at nearly as much a price as what you are implying. The 'merchants' sure made a bickering about it, though,"_ he answers in kind, facing his mother, _"looked real desperate to sell it. If they were so cut up about it, they could have just kept it. One of them had eyes sadder than Freja on a bad day, though… if they were acting, they sure did a damn good job at doing so."_

Valka crosses her arms and leers. _"And you know what happens when he sees a bummed face."_

 _"Hey, what can I say? I took the best from both of you. Or my grandparents. Dunno."_

* * *

And just as the wandering Viking earlier had ignored them, the two Vikings fell into old habits… by failing to account just how much enthusiasm Anna had for an object she made clear that she was infatuated with; so much so she barely resisted her bodily urge to just play the damned thing.

Tip-toe, tip-toe her paws crept through the floor, and before she knew it – she's staring face to face with her second love… an exaggeration, for sure, but when you hail from a musical family such as Gal's, one was bound to be enraptured by the strings of song at some point. Some sooner than others. It just so happened that Anna had applied herself to the former. A gift or a curse, she didn't know; but she'd be damned if she couldn't hear a note again.

Her head soon works up the courage further scour the room… and conveniently placed on the mantle-piece: a mahogany bow. She then nods, curt.

Yeah. A good bout of Bach would do them some good.

Her form wraps around. Front paws on the neck, one claw holding the back, another three placed in front.

Sure, her paws covered a lot of ground, but it would be some tall order expecting her to transition down the frets quick enough if the piece demanded it.

Damn her lack of opposable thumbs.

Resisting the urge to sulk, she stands on her two hind legs, the majority of her weight dependent on the endpin's ability – if it had any – to withstand the punishment of her sheer _mass_.

And through some miraculous tenor, it did.

Anna breathes. The world outside her immediate periphery blackens out – her mind brings to her sheet music the size of a pin. She had been deprived of enjoyment long enough.

* * *

By the time she was done and every note had been exchanged…

Anna faces up, only to see Valka and Hiccup standing, arms to their sides. The common thread she could make out from of them was that both of their mouths were standing agape. She fights the urge to blush.

Hiccup stares at her, eyes wide; in utter _awe. "I totally knew it could do that."_

* * *

Gentle night wind brushes across their faces; a sniffle elicited from one… a barely containable fit of quivering skin from another. Crickets… cicadas alike – through, they drone from their unleavened branches of old.

Before the cohort, atop the roof of the dragon nest… a lumbering giant of an Isle... resting as sound as a babe. Were one to squint well enough… Berk's Night-watch division could be spotted dancing across the upper-plane of man… shapes so opaque they blocked space's soft, blooming light.

Hiccup sighs.

Not having war forced down their gobs really had Viking society going. Though, he didn't know what to make of chieftains _using_ their questionably aware dragons to do their bidding. Odin… his people had a long ways to go. He didn't want to lose one more. Not her. Not any dragon, for that matter.

His hands squeeze, head turning towards Anna. The dragon responds in kind. _"Now that we are here… you wanted to know why I wouldn't introduce to the rest of Berk?"_

 _"…Yes."_

 _"You… you are the eye of the storm, Anna,"_ he explains, stumbling over his word choice every so often before he managed to articulate any cohesive train of thought. _"A dragon like you coming along is an unknown. Unprecedented. And we, as a society, have a pendant of trying to manipulate things we do not understand. Things we just don't know. Soon as they hear you, soon as they ensnare so much as a whisper of your tongue – they will not stop to find what you are. Or your allegiances. Or your thoughts. They won't stop in their search for power. I shudder to think what they will do to you then._

 _"And then, before you know it, they will start to get so many bright ideas with the other dragons, what with the revelation dragons_ do _have brains! Use dragons as reconnaissance. Use them as warriors to settle their biddings with one another. Use them to sort out their own messes they themselves created in the first place!_

 _"And we_ STILL _haven't gotten past the phase where Viking society sees them as assets rather than real people!_

 _"Godsdamn-it!"_ He hacks his foot off the old, dusty roof-top; dirt of all kind disperse in his wake. Breathing defeatedly, he lies down… the night sky soon meeting his eyes.

 _"I am sorry, Anna… I just… I, I hate sitting in that room… being in the presence of such power-hungry_ mongrels _. I don't understand people sometimes. And I wish I could make it stop. Just make it all stop. I…"_

 _"Hiccup!"_ screams Anna.

 _"W-wha—"_

And then… out of the corner of his eye, a great mass… coated in black then wreathed through the night, barely visible, tangible, comprehensible – and it came whizzing towards him… wind screaming. Oh, gods.

It was heading towards him.

And just out of earshot, he swears he could almost hear his mother almost _giggling_ at this madness. Damn.

He hated ma sometimes.


	32. Venus Under Desensitization

His brother – for all of his faults, complexes, _kinks_ and whatnot – was certainly right about one thing. The white dragon couldn't hear for _shit_. Only at the last second could she hear the screaming wind crashing down upon him, and even then, the dragon acted all disorientated to nigh Hel! He didn't even know whether he could classify her as a dragon at this point… never in his life had he ever seen a dragon that could an instrument, much less one that looked so… intimidating.

And there he now laid, writhing on the bleeding, nigh-dusty ground – getting the Freja-sparse air sucked out of him to show for it.

…

Oh, no – now you are telling Hiccup _Anna_ has ear wax for noise mufflers too?!

He was promptly shaken by said black creature by the shoulders in a bout of hysteria – an electric jolt that joggled him out of his dreamland almost immediately. Sure, he was lost in that perpetual mindscape for a while now, but he surely could have been a little bit gentler…

"N-nice to meet you too," Hiccup manages to rasp, grasping his shoulders. "Mind telling me what's on the agenda… t-that prompted this attack?"

Rolling his eyes – Toothless huffs, hot vapour blooming like hibiscuses out his nostrils. **"Whatever else, Hiccup? I overheard,"** the dragon smugly drew with his writing claw on the ample dust below. The human throws a coughing fit at the dust he parted _fa paux_ ; _weaklings_ , the dragon must have thought to himself.

"F-from… that, far?"

 **"You seem to forget that I saved you from Hookfang on the very basis of having good ears. We… _I_ , am not called the offspring of Lightning and Death for nothing. Same can't be said for Anna, though…"**

They turn around to the dragon-of-the-week in question. She couldn't _look_ any more alienated even if she tried. _"Y-yeah?"_ peeps Anna.

Toothless shoots back, nodding at Hiccup as the ground screeches in Toothless' wake. Gods, he was fast now. **"Mind if you translate for me, Hiccup?"**

He sighs, resigning. "Anything you want, master; I'd be deader than a trapped doe, otherwise…"

* * *

Put simply, Anna was _terrified_. For a language she hadn't heard a lick of herself in Dudinka, _damn_ if it didn't sound ominous. Sounded like an unholy arrangement of diminished notes to her – and that… didn't sit well with her current mood.

Note that it was not in a manner where she would be the one rightly furious about it all. Not at all.

 ** _"Anna…"_**

That was her cue. She looks up from her gloom… to see Hiccup looking like he was trying his hardest to discern whatever the hell was being written on the ground? Took her a solid second to notice that it was the dragon trying his damnest. Well… at least she knows she has one dragon she could relate with should communication ever come to blows.

…as well finding another such fellow who would know the pain it would toil to write something as simple as hello…

And if she didn't know better, Hiccup _himself_ looked like he was having trouble interpreting his _own_ language. Guess handwriting without a lack of opposable thumbs go hand in hand across all cultures… Not that she would know what those jibbly gibbly shit-fuck scribbles they called symbols are supposed to be, anyway. She reckons it was for witchcraft.

 ** _"Guess it's pretty obvious going off that face of yours…"_** Anna froze, thoughts screeching to a halt. ** _"That my… your…_** _no, sorry,_ **my _word is as good as the… human's, so I will cut to the chase…"_**

Were it not for the fact that she had scales her cheeks would have looked a swirling whirlpool of red. Thank God.

 _" **There was a… reason for us leaving you to your devices** —Gods, yeah, you would write like that, Toothless—OW!"_

She didn't know what he was thinking to be honest. The guy he was talking about was standing right next to him. How could it _not_ have ended with Toothless finding it necessary to headbutt him to the ground immediately after?

Actually, more like nudged if she thinks about it, but Hiccup's sorry state of a muscular mass left a lot to be desired.

Valka – who she almost forgot was still there – groans, a hand up her face to show for it. _"Swear to the gods, those two only have hard-ons for each other when they are near guests. It's like they are bloody into exhi… actually, never mind. Anyway, what that black loaf said earlier was right. We left you alone to discuss and… came to a conclusion. Obviously, it was a…"_ the woman looks over to her band-aid for a moment, _"stupid move in hindsight."_

 _"And I take full blame for that,"_ Hiccup interjects suddenly – he stands up from the floor, the scowl he initially splayed for Toothless disappearing as fast as it came. _"Just unsure whether you would like it or not."_

A fist flies up his mouth to block the barrage of saliva and sound, strolling down towards the railing – just by the edge of a rather steep incline to a forage of stone and death. Two hands are brought up the metal, and he leans forward.

 _"W-we thought about it and…"_ he continues. _"Well. You are not from here, obviously… from beyond the snow belt, as you said. The likeliness of you making it back on a trip on your own, in one piece… it is close to none. We haven't told you this explicitly yet, but… Rumours circulated all around about the seasonal opening of Aegir's Wall, and – well – I guess you could say the chieftain lifestyle is getting a bit bland."_

 _"An opening? I highly doubt nature works like that – specially if its 'seasonal',"_ quips Anna.

The chief brings down his hands upon the poor railing, slamming it with the blunt side of his fists. _"I thought so, too! But I know how to tell whether a person is lying or not… and let me tell you, Anna – those returning sailors didn't lie. All of them – unanimous in combined accounts… the opening is real. It has to be. Either that, or they are very good liars. And we both know Vikings can't lie for shit."_

* * *

 _"I just…"_ says Hiccup – sighing immediately after. He tries to blink… but the eye-bags on directly below disagreed vehemently. He throws his head back. A chilly moan. _"I know; this trip is probably a fool's errand, but…"_

…but he was reluctant to admit it in front of their faces…

That the sole reason for them going on this trip wasn't just for security reasons… or even for curiosity's sake. It was sheer boredom. Ever since Dad died, life had been a Hotburple ride from the top down to the fiery depths of Hel. He took up the mantle without almost any hesitation – but _that_ was because it was either do or die. He couldn't let _Drago_ of all people run a one-man authoritarian _empire_ ; it was probably for the best for his sake, however. Soon as any _other_ tribe gets word of this, he wouldn't be treated to so kind a death.

But now, he suffers from the rippling effect he started himself. And now, he had to deal with the consequences of hasty forethought.

Fucking politics. What a blight.

What had the chieftain's position left for him? Sitting on his ass and doing shitall every day. Pardon the deals he struck with the other chieftains, but such dealings were bores – unchallenging and unexciting in every way shape or form: his charisma knew no bounds. Striking new treaties and deals came to as much of a second nature as breathing was.

But this recently devised… expedition – the one he rambled on about constantly in his Things; it sparked an ancient flame within him, a primal urge for venturing into the unknown and somehow clawing out of its maws alive and well. Goes to show how much insanity he truly has bottled within that skeletal frame he called a body, anyway. If he hadn't enacted such a concoction, he would surely have been dead to the world two winters ago.

Safety was paramount… slipups would not be tolerated.

Key word: paramount. Yeah, that didn't go over so well with a certain hotshot Viking.

Damn it, Dad…

 _"Case in point, we need to get there before any of the other chiefs do,"_ he continues.

His mother adjusts him, barging into his train of thought. _"Yeah, I never really… got that part?"_

 _"Well, stuck-up little pieces of shit that Vikings are, one chieftain had the bright idea of sailing_ into _the Wall. I reckon you can guess where he ended up. At least the Storm's new one is more reasonable. And saner. Yes, much saner._

 _"But that is not what we are here for, is it? No. Nor what was the initial topic, regardless. Ugh. Ignore me. Semantics."_ He clears his throat, hitting his chest one, two times just to check.

 _"So, yeah. You can see where I am going with this. We are going to be doing what Chief Muddle had sought to do all those years ago. Except,"_ he pauses suddenly, _"we are planning on making back alive._

 _"We are planning on an_ exhibition _. Grand one – probably the costliest in generations. Well, besides that Hidden World Dad kept obsessing over, but that never really got anywhere – five explorers or less if we were to supply generously. We are already so stocked up supplies what with dragons carrying out the bulk of resource gathering; might as well put them to good use. Jackets, jackets, more jackets, you get the picture._

 _"Originally, we were only doing it out of simple curiosity and study on my part, but now it appears we have a duty to uphold. We Berkians rarely let our friends fade into the background. Ermm… recently, anyway."_

Toothless and Valka just stare at him. Anna didn't know what to make of it, to be honest. Inside joke?

 _"I… I just burned myself, didn't I?"_

She nods. Yeah. Inside joke.

 _"…Moving on. I personally think that you coming with us – that's my mom, Toothless and I – will give the two of us some answers. Perhaps… maybe we can find you a way back…_

 _"home."_

Anna freezes, tailfins and ear-flaps standing up at full attention. Her pupils, how black and despondent it once was, turn wide. Was he being true, being honest? No, it couldn't have been anything but – they went through the trouble of getting her out of any sorts of trouble thus far… it wouldn't have been in character.

Yet… she had much trouble comprehending.

Nobody had ever treated her with such kindness.

Nobody had ever gone out of their way to help her even if that meant going in blind. Even if that meant their lives were in danger.

Nobody had acted like that before, other than…

A finger strokes her cheek… and realises it _had_ turned a bit wet. She curses her willpower, forcing her tears back with a barely contained lump. This was no way to treat housekeepers! No, no…

 _"Hey."_

If it's in a word and it's in a rut… she finds herself staring down. Anna corrected that notion soon enough.

 _"It's okay,"_ Hiccup soothes. _"We… don't mind. Mom and I and Toothless really don't… hey, where are…"_

Both recover from their quiet moment quickly when they find the latter two standing right next to each other. Toothless had wrote again, and Valka, it seemed, was all too happy to oblige.

Well, besides the frown on her face, that is.

 ** _"Hiccup,"_** she began to translate, ** _"even if I the epitome of the apex predator my body so wonderfully exudes of, we will still have problems. Namely – getting there. It's a two days' worth of travel with no land in sight. As much as I am flattered that you believe our endurance is capable of such a feat – I am afraid us dragons do have to take a breather every once in a while._**

 ** _"That is to say, between six-hour intervals, preferably. After that, all bets are off. You humans used a boat at first and that was when you had the right luck and timing, anyhow. We only a general area to look… not the entrance we are looking for. This hole is seasonal, and even then – erratic. We don't know when it's going to close again, and I'd rather not for my wings to run ten times around Berk only for it to turn out to be a fruitless endeavour."_**

"Then I suppose you have a better idea?" Hiccup retorts back, all goodwill he laced in his tone flying up to nigh hell.

 ** _"Yes, actually. Hopefully it's simple enough for your tiny brain to comprehend."_**

He got out of the chief the desired reaction: a scowl. _Haha_ , the dragon's face oozed; payback!

 ** _"Get this: it's a great, much less suicidal_** **and _with the added benefit of not requiring us to chase after this wild goose chase that's going to get us all killed. We need information. We need to get to Mer."_**

Now Anna knows how it feels like to be left out of the conversation; poor Toothless. _"Mer?"_ she asks.

 _"…Yeah… It's a one-stop trading bridge-port. But I don't see—"_ How mad he was only to then be promptly silenced by his mom.

 _"It's renowned. Or should I say infamous? Being a money place, it attracts the worst kind of people. Name it, want it? You got it._

 _"Some people come there clean, some not with the purest of intentions. Some people emerge filthy rich… or get swept under the crowding rug. Mer's a free market with little to no regulation. Anybody down on their luck drifts by its docks one way or another. Either they get killed themselves afterwards… or prosper under the culture of bacteria."_

Only now did Hiccup catch up with this, though – Anna had been left in the dust with that one "So…"

"Yes. _It's time we get ourselves dirty._ "

Something clicked. And an incredulous look took over. "…Information brokers."

 _"Wow!"_ cries Val. _"Hiccup_ does _have a brain!"_

Anna ends up spurting a giggle much to his dismay.

 _Such is life_ , he hung sadly.

* * *

 **AU:**

 **Like where I am going with this? [wiggles eyebrows]**

 **Leave a review and tell me what ya think!**


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